Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (2024)

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By: Christi On: |Updated: |Jump to Recipe

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This Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe is inspired by the best cookies in the whole world – Levain’s! It makes the most delicious, thick and chewy chocolate peanut chip cookies you could dream of. Made in under 30 minutes with the simplest ingredients, you’ll never need another cookie recipe ever again!

Don’t fly all the way to New York City to get your favorite cookies, make them from the comfort of your own home.

Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (1)

Reasons You’ll Love This

Thick and Chewy – These cookies are massive in the best way! More cookies for you!

Levain Copycat – If you’ve never had a Levain Bakery cookie, you are missing out. But since you’d have to go to NY to get some, this copycat recipe comes pretty dang close.

Peanut Butter & Chocolate – A match made in cookie heaven! Chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips? Does it get any better than that?

Easy To Make – A cookie recipe that only takes 30 minutes to make? Pinch me please!

Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (2)

The thickest cookie you’ve ever seen meets the beautiful flavor combination that is peanut butter and chocolate. If you’ve been looking for something to satisfy your sweet tooth, this surely won’t disappoint.

Ingredient Info

Let’s discuss how to make this Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe, as well as the ingredients that are needed. Please take note that below you will find discussion, expert tips, and answers to frequently asked questions about this recipe to help you recreate it in your kitchen. If you *just* want the recipe itself, scroll down. The full printable recipe itself, with exact measurements and instructions, is found at the bottom of this page.

Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (3)
  • Butter – Unsalted butter is the best butter choice for this recipe. Before you do anything, you will want to make sure that the butter is cold, and cut into cubes before you add it to the recipe. To help you cut it into cubes, you can place the butter in the freezer for a few minutes to firm it up slightly before slicing.
  • Sugar – Use white granulated sugar for this recipe.
  • Dark Cocoa Powder – Dark cocoa powder has a deep, rich flavor to it that I wouldn’t recommend skipping out on. However if all you have is regular cocoa powder, that will work.
  • Flour – All purpose flour is best for this recipe. This tip is especially important for cookies: when you are measuring out flour, be sure to fluff up your flour and spoon it into the measuring cup before adding it to the recipe. This will ensure that without a scale, you will get the correct measurement of flour for the cookies.
  • Peanut Butter Chips – Any brand of peanut butter chips works great. This is meant to be a peanut butter and chocolate recipe, but you can use whatever flavor chips you desire.
Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (4)

Step By Step Instructions

  1. Start by preheating the oven to 350°F. Grab a few baking sheets and line them with parchment paper or silicone mats. In a large bowl, add the cold, cubed butter and granulated sugar. Using a hand or stand mixer, combine the butter and sugar together until fluffy which usually takes about 2-3 minutes.
  2. Add the eggs one at a time, and blend until smooth after each addition. Scrape the sides of the bowl if needed.Add the cocoa powder to the mixture and continue to beat until everything is combined.
  3. Next, add flour, baking powder, and salt to the mixture.
  4. Blend it together on a low speed until everything is incorporated into a dough.
  5. Add the peanut butter chips to the mixture and fold them in gently with a spatula.On a floured surface, or in the mixing bowl knead the dough by hand to ensure the ingredients are well combined. Be aware that the dough will be very thick, this is normal.
  6. Split the dough into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball then flatten the ball just slightly. Don’t flatten it too thin. Place the cookies onto the baking sheets about 2 inches apart from each other. Bake them in the oven for 16-20 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the sheets for about 5-10 minutes. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack to let them cool all the way, and you’re ready to serve!
Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (5)

Tips And Advice

Storage – Store the baked cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for about 3-4 days.

Freezing – You can also store the cookie dough in the freezer for up to 3 months. If you do this however, just know that it can change the consistency of the cookies quite a bit. I highly recommend making them fresh.

Cookie tips

For extra melty and photogenic cookies, try pressing a few extra peanut butter chips into the tops of the cookies right as they come out of the oven. It makes them look and taste just that much better!

Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (6)
Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (7)

FAQs

What is special about Levain cookies?

They are large and in charge! Seriously, they’re so big, buttery, gooey, chocolatey, delicious and everything you could ever want in a cookie. If that isn’t convincing enough to make these, I don’t know what is!

Are Levain Cookies fully cooked?

Yes! While they come out incredibly gooey, and soft, I can assure you if you follow the instructions correctly, these cookies will come out fully baked and safe to eat. That being said, you can under bake them just a smidge if you like the center to be nice and fudgy.

Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (8)

Recipes You’ll Love

If you enjoyed these Chocolate Levain Bakery inspired cookies, you’re going to love some of these other similar recipes that are just as good as this one!

  • Levain Cookie Recipe
  • Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
  • The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
  • Copycat Crumbl Cookie Recipe

More Recipes You’ll Love!

  • Ghirardelli Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

  • Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies

  • Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

  • Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (13)

Tried this recipe?

I love to hear from readers who make my recipes! Please leave a comment and review below. If you have photos, tag me @lovefromtheoven onInstagramandPinterest along with #LFTOrecipes

Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (14)

Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe Copycat

5 from 9 votes

Author Christi Johnstone

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 14 minutes mins

Cook Time 16 minutes mins

Total Time 30 minutes mins

Servings 12 jumbo cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup unsalted butter, cold and cut into small cubes freezing butter slightly makes it easier to cut into cubes
  • 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • ½ cup dark cocoa powder
  • 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
  • ¼ tsp coarse salt
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 cups peanut butter chips

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 350˚ F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the butter and sugar. Beat together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Blend in the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl as needed. Mix in the cocoa powder until well blended.

  • Add the flour, salt and baking powder to the bowl and mix on low speed just until incorporated. Fold in the peanut butter chips with a spatula.

  • Transfer the dough to a work surface and knead briefly by hand to be sure the ingredients are well combined. This dough is VERY thick. I kneaded mine in the bowl, and that worked out just fine.

  • Divide the dough into 4 ounce portions (or divide into 12 equal pieces). Roll each portion of dough into a ball and flatten just slightly into a disc. Place on the prepared baking sheets, a few inches apart.

  • Bake 16-20 minutes. Let cool on the baking sheets 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Notes

These cookies are LARGE! They are closer to the size of a hamburger patty than your typical cookie!

Nutrition

Calories: 322kcal | Carbohydrates: 41g | Protein: 4g | Fat: 17g | Saturated Fat: 10g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 4g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 72mg | Sodium: 184mg | Potassium: 130mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 21g | Vitamin A: 518IU | Calcium: 32mg | Iron: 2mg

Disclaimer

Nutrition information is estimated as a courtesy. If using for medical purposes, please verify information using your own nutritional calculator. Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

Tried this Recipe? Pin it!Mention @LoveFromTheOven or tag #LFTORecipes!

Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (15)
Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (16)

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sue says

    Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (17)
    Haven’t baked these yet, but I plan to. Did you use Dutch processed cocoa?

    Reply

    • Christi Johnstone says

      For this recipe, you can use Dutch or natural.

      Reply

  2. Laura says

    Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (18)
    Very good cookies. I didn’t have chocolate chips so I added M & M’s instead. I made 1 1/2 tbls size cookies so I only had to bake them 10 minutes. Definitely a keeper.

    Reply

  3. Michelle says

    Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (19)
    Best cookies I ever made. Thank you for the recipe. I shared them with my family and coworkers.

    Reply

  4. Sara says

    I don’t know what I did wrong ? I followed the directions pretty close but my batter came out very sticky and even making these cookies large I have way more than 12 cookies! Can I freeze this dough?

    Cookies are in the oven, hoping they taste great!!!

    Reply

    • Christi says

      If they are sticky they might have needed a bit more flour, though this is an odd dough compared to most so it is a bit sticky. You can make 12, 24 or 36 with this, it will all depend on how big your scoops of cookie dough are (just adjust baking times, little cookies = less time). You could freeze the dough, I haven’t with this one so I can’t give you an adjusted bake time, but freezing it won’t cause any problems. Hope you enjoy them!

      Reply

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Levain Bakery Cookie Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What makes Levain cookies so good? ›

Here are the main characteristics of Levain cookies:

They are crisp, brown, and “caramelized” on the outside. These cookies are soft and gooey (underbaked) on the inside. They are loaded with good-quality chocolate. The most famous Levain version has walnuts, but they are optional here.

Are Levain cookies fully cooked? ›

Whether your craving hits at 7:30 am on the Upper East Side or 10pm in Noho, we've got warm, just-baked cookies to hit the spot.

What temperature do you bake levain cookies? ›

If I am baking on a regular setting, I bake at 400 for 11-12 minutes. If using convection, I bake for 8-9 minutes. To achieve the gooey consistency of the Levain Bakery cookie, you must take the cookie out of the oven before the center is baked.

What are the flavors of Levain style cookies? ›

Why choose one when you can have them all?!? Our classic Cookie Assortment includes one of each of our original 4 cookie flavors: Chocolate Chip Walnut, Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal Raisin and Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip. Sorry, no substitutions!

Is levain worth the hype? ›

very good! Make sure you have lots of milk or water on hand - these cookies are iconic and smell heavenly, but they're also very rich and I can't imagine eating more than 1/2 of one in one sitting.

Are Levain cookies worth it? ›

The best, most flavorful, most decadent bake-at-home frozen cookie. Holy crap. Stop considering and purchase. They're worth the price.

Should I refrigerate Levain cookies? ›

Cookies arrive ready to enjoy! Store cookies in an air-tight container or wrapped tightly at room temperature for up to 4 days. Do not refrigerate. If you'd like to save them for later, individually wrap them and store in the freezer for up to 3 months, or until a craving hits.

Why are Levain cookies so big? ›

Over 20 years ago, the founders/owners of Levain Bakery (Pam and Connie) were training for an Iron Man Triathlon together and they were insatiably hungry all the time. Regular cookies weren't cutting it, so they made the famous 6-ounce cookies we now know and love, and the rest is history.

Why is Levain Bakery so famous? ›

In 1995, they whipped up a batch of big chocolate chip walnut cookies, and their neighborhood shop became so much more. “The cookie” earned a spot in the hearts of locals and visitors alike, taking on a life of its own as a New York City icon.

Is it better to bake cookies at 325 or 350? ›

350° is the standard temp for a cookie, and it's a great one. Your cookies will bake evenly and the outside will be done at the same time as the inside. Baking at 325° also results in an evenly baked cookie, but the slower cooking will help yield a chewier cookie. The outsides will be a little softer, too.

Is it better to bake cookies at 350 or 400? ›

Placing chilled dough in a slightly hotter oven (usually 400 degrees versus 350 — 375 degrees used for cookies like chocolate chip) helps the cookies retain their shape. Cool It. Let the cookies rest on the cookie sheets for a few minutes before removing to a wire rack for cooling.

Are levain cookies underbaked? ›

Levain Bakery-style cookies are intentionally crafted to have a soft and gooey interior. The texture might resemble a slightly undercooked cookie, but it's a result of the baking technique used to achieve that irresistibly melty center while maintaining a crispy exterior.

What is the most popular levain cookie? ›

1st Place: Chocolate Chip Walnut

This is Levain Bakery's most popular cookie.

Why is it called levain cookies? ›

We take our name from the French word for the natural leavening agent made of flour, water and wild yeasts: Levain.

Who is the best cookie baker? ›

Dorie Greenspan is quite possibly the world's best cookie maker. She has been baking ― with a serious interest in cookies ― for over 30 years.

What is Levain Bakery known for? ›

Levain Bakery is a New York City staple, known for its decadent, buttery, super thick cookies.

How do you describe Levain cookies? ›

I had a friend describe Levain cookies as a giant wad of dough. I think that's pretty accurate! What's incredible, though, is that this mountainous cookie has a crisp, golden brown outer layer. Just underneath, there's an extremely chewy, doughy center that melts in your mouth.

What are Levain cookies made of? ›

Aside from the chocolate, there's butter, brown sugar, plain or toasted white sugar, and eggs, along with walnuts (a signature ingredient in those Levain cookies).

What are the benefits of using a levain? ›

And this can be essential if you maintain a smaller sourdough starter or your recipe requires a large preferment. Further, using a levain means I can maintain a smaller sourdough starter to reduce flour use, and then in one step, I can build up my preferment to cover larger recipes or make multiple recipes.

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