I’m always seeing videos of these super thick gooey cookies that Levain Bakery in New York sells….I’VE BEEN WANTING TO TRY THEM SO BAD.
I don’t see myself going to New York anytime soon, so I felt like I needed to make them myself. Since I’ve not tried the Levain Bakery cookies, when making this recipe I just watched a lot of videos of other people trying them and went from there.
Do these taste exactly like the Levain Bakery ones….I don’t know. But they do taste amazing, these are my new favourite kind of chocolate chip cookie.
Video Tutorial
What do these cookies taste like?
If you’ve never tried or even heard about the Levain Bakery cookies, let me explain what makes them different.
The main difference is the thickness. I feel like for me, this was the main appeal. I prefer cookies on the thicker side so this made me want to try the Levain so badly.
However, when cookies are thick, they typically taste more cakey.
But with the Levain ones, they’re apparently crispy on the outside and super gooey on the inside.
Again, I’ve never tried them so I’m going by what I’ve heard other people say. But for the cookies I’ve made, the goal was a for them to be super thick, have a crispy outside and a gooey inside.
It took me a few attempt but I finally ended up achieving this!
Ingredients for the cookies
Here are the ingredients you are going to need to make these Levain Bakery style cookies:
- Unsalted butter – I like using unsalted butter so I can control the amount of salt in the recipe, but salted butter will work too. Just don’t add any extra salt.
- Sugar – We’re going to use a mixture of both brown and white sugar. The brown sugar is going to add moisture and flavour. The white sugar will add some crispiness.
- Vanilla – for flavour.
- 1 egg + 1 yolk – the addition of an extra egg yolk is going to add extra moisture to these cookies, which will make them soft and gooey on the inside.
- Plain flour – also known as all-purpose flour.
- Corn flour – also known as corn starch.
- Salt – this will help enhance the flavours. If you’re using salted butter, don’t add this.
- Baking powder – usually I use both baking powder and baking soda in my cookies. Baking powder helps cookies rise, baking soda helps them spread. But since the goal is thickness, I used only baking powder for these.
- Chocolate chips – I do prefer using chopped chocolate in cookies, instead of chips. But the original Levain Bakery cookie uses chocolate chips, so I used them too. You can use whichever you want.
- Walnuts – the original Levain Bakery cookie has walnuts in it so I added them as well. This is optional but it was a nice addition.
How to get thick cookies
To make this recipe, I took my regular chocolate chip cookie recipe and changed a few things, in order to get a thicker cookies.
Here’s what those changes were:
Cold butter instead of melted
I usually always make my cookies with melted butter, but I saw a lot of recipe’s recommend using cold butter instead.
I tried it and it did make a huge difference. So for these cookies, use cold butter.
You are going to cream this butter with the sugars and vanilla for about 5 minutes.
If you have an electric hand or stand mixer, use it. It is not easy to cream butter and sugar together when the butter is cold.
If you are going to be making these by hand, I recommend just using softened butter instead. Your cookies might end up a little less thick, but at least your arm won’t be in pain you know.
Add some corn flour
Corn flour/corn starch in cookies does 2 things: it helps them spread less as they bake, and it also makes the inside of the cookies softer.
I didn’t add a lot, just 2 tablespoon!
Make mounds out of the cookie dough instead of balls
Once your cookie dough has been made, typically the next step is to make cookie dough balls out of the dough.
For these, instead of making compact round balls. Instead just get 150g of the dough, and gently form a tall mound out of this. Keep doing this until you’ve used all the dough.
Freeze your cookie dough mounds
Before baking the cookies, freeze the cookie dough mounds for an hour. This will stop them from spreading as much in the oven.
The baking temperature
Typically, most cookies are baked at 180c/350f. But I baked these cookies at 220c/425f.
This is a very hot oven for cookies.
But I heard that Levain Bakery bakes their cookies at a higher temp in order to get the outside to be crispy.
I couldn’t find what exact temperature they bake their cookies, so I tried a few different ones and I found that 220c worked best.
Baking the cookies at this higher temp will make the outside cook a little quicker than the inside, which one, will make them spread less. But two, it will make the outside nice and crispy and the inside soft and gooey!
Make sure to let the cookies cool after baking
So in order to get a gooey cookie, they need to be slightly underbaked.
As they cool down on the baking tray, they will cook a little more.
So once these cookies have baked, don’t try eating them straight away. They will be too soft to pick up and also if you break into one, it will seem a little raw.
Leave them alone to cool for about 10-20 minutes, then you can dive in!
Making these ahead of time
I just wanted to mention that if you wanted to make these ahead of time, or if you only wanted only 1 or 2 cookies, you could leave the cookie dough mounds in the freezer.
They can stay in the freezer for up to 3 months. Just keep them in an air-tight container or a food bag.
Whenever you’re ready to eat them, pre-heat your oven, then bake as many as you want, straight out of the freezer!
Here are some other cookie recipes I think you also need to try:
Levain Bakery
Style Cookies
Ingredients
Makes: 6
120g unsalted butter, cold
100g brown sugar
100g granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
280g plain flour
2 tablespoons corn flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
220g chocolate chips
80g chopped walnuts, optional
Directions
- Making the cookie dough:
- Add your butter, both sugars and vanilla into a bowl. Beat these together for 5 minutes.
- Add in the egg and egg yolk, mix until combined.
- In a separate bowl, mix together the plain flour, corn flour, salt and baking powder. Add this into the other bowl and mix just until the flour is incorporated. This dough will be a little crumbly, this is ok we want this.
- Mix in the chocolate chips and the walnuts.
- Form 6 mounds out of this dough, each one of my mounds were around 150g. When forming these, try not to squeeze the dough too much. You don't want it to be too compact, you want it to be a little crumbly.
- Place these onto a tray or plate and leave them in the freezer for 1 hour.
- Baking the cookies:
- About 10 minutes before you're ready to bake them, pre-heat your oven to 220c/425f.
- Place your cookie dough mounds on a large baking paper lined tray, making sure to leave gaps between them so they have room to spread.
- Bake the cookies for around 18-20 minutes.
- Once baked, leave them to cool on the tray. If you try breaking one open straight away, it will seem raw, they need about 10-20 minutes to set up. But then after you can enjoy!
hey i am dying to make these but is the 220c for the oven for a fan assisted oven or a regular oven pls tell me i cry
Author
pls wipe them tears, it’s regular!
These were delicious and chunky! I loved the crunchy outside with the soft inside and will definitely make them again! 🙂