Sometimes trying a new-to-me food lights a fire in my brain, a fire that won’t be extinguished until I’ve figured out exactly how I can re-create it. So it was with the chocolate chip–walnut cookie from New York City–based Levain Bakery.
Breaking open the crisp exterior and biting into the tender middle crammed with walnut chunks and molten chocolate isn’t merely about satisfying one’s sweet tooth; it’s the delectable culmination of a culinary pilgrimage. The cookie is huge, weighing in at 6 ounces—heavier than a baseball!—which is enough to draw attention in and of itself.
But it’s also enormous in its acclaim. Inspired by word of mouth and social media posts, fans stand in long lines to purchase still-warm cookies.
The Hallmarks of a Levain Cookie
- Tall stature with limited spread
- Large walnut chunks
- Molten chocolate chips
- Just enough dough to hold the chips and nuts
- Crusty, well-browned exterior
- Soft, moist interior
Grand Style
The hugeness of the Levain cookie isn’t just a gimmick; it helps produce those strikingly different textures. The large mass means it takes longer for heat to penetrate the center, so the interior remains soft while the exterior becomes crisp.
The smaller the cookie, the more difficult it is to achieve such a dramatic contrast.
But is the generous portion size the only difference between a Levain cookie and other cookies? To find out, I made a batch of our Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies, but instead of dividing the dough into 3-tablespoon portions as the recipe directs, I molded it into hulking 6-ounce spheres.
Instead of remaining chunky, these cookies spread to more than 5 inches across in the oven, and the centers were too set to be mistaken for Levain cookies.
Lesson learned: A cookie that spreads has more surface area, so the heat penetrates more quickly, baking the cookie throughout. I needed to stop the spread.
Levain Bakery
Though the original Levain Bakery, which opened in New York City in 1995, focused on bread (“levain” is French for “leaven”), it was the giant cookies that became a social media sensation and fueled the company’s expansion into cities across the United States. Devotees stand in line to pay $6 for a single cookie.
Inside Information
After inspecting the label on a box of mail-ordered Levain cookies, I confirmed that the ingredient list was straightforward.
And judging by videos I’d found online, the mixing method was also conventional: Blend softened butter with brown and white sugar in a mixer; add eggs; mix in flour, leavening, and salt; stir in chocolate chips and walnuts last.
So it had to be the ratios of those ingredients that caused the shape (and thus the texture) to be so different.
Fat and sugar encourage spread; flour decreases it. So I cut back drastically on the butter and sugar in my usual cookie formula. (Reducing sugar and fat in a cookie sounds counterintuitive, but keep in mind that the abundance of nuts and chocolate would add plenty of richness and sweetness.)
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To capitalize on the butter that I was using, I browned it to intensify its flavor and evaporate its water, which is about 18 percent of its weight.
Now there would be less steam and more concentrated sugar in the cookies, making the centers denser and chewier. (Bonus: Since the butter was now liquid, I could put away the mixer. This dough comes together with a bowl and a spatula.)
These cookies were much thicker than my previous batch, but they still spread a little more than I wanted, and the interiors were still too set.
To further limit the spread while keeping the centers soft, I tried freezing the dough balls solid and baking them straight from the freezer.
This was a step too far: Freezing kept their shape thick and stout, but the insides weren’t just soft; they tasted pasty and underbaked, having failed to hit the 160-degree minimum temperature required to eliminate raw flavor.
The middle ground of refrigerating the portioned dough for at least 8 hours and then baking straight from the fridge produced just the right shape and texture.
How Levain Cookies Are Different
You can’t produce the hallmarks of a Levain cookie—a stocky shape and varied textures—by simply shaping regular cookie dough into giant portions.
When we baked Levain-sized, 6-ounce scoops of our Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie dough, the results were flat and thin. That’s because the dough contains lots of fat and sugar, both of which cause a cookie to spread.
But if you can prevent spreading, heat will penetrate slowly through the thick dough, creating a crisp exterior and a gooey interior.
So for our Levain cookies, we cut back on butter and sugar, knowing that the ample nuts and chips would compensate for any lost richness or sweetness.
Final Adjustments
Having produced a convincing duplicate of the famous cookie, I made a few more tweaks. Finding the Levain cookies a bit underseasoned, I increased the salt in my recipe.
I also swapped the light brown sugar for dark and tilted the balance of sugars in favor of brown for a deeper flavor. And I added a generous glug of vanilla extract, which had been notably absent from the Levain cookies. It went a long way toward coaxing out rich toffee notes.
With their crispy-crunchy exteriors; soft, molten middles; depth of flavor; and ease of preparation, my Levain-inspired cookies weren’t just huge.
They were hugely successful.
Want more of the back story?
Listen to our episode “Creating a Copycat Levain Cookie” on our award-winning podcast, Proof.
Levain-Style Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies
The Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookie from Levain Bakery is hugely popular. Here’s how to make this style of recipe at home.
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