Levain Bakery Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookie Copycat Recipe

Ever since I tried Levain Bakery’s cookies for the first time at their Washington, DC location I could not stop thinking about them and wanted to try making them for myself. After sifting through the myriad of copycat recipe that exist on the internet Modern Honey’s recipe looked the best to me. The recipe below is her recipe with a few modifications in the overall process which I made after my research. These cookies turned out amazing and are almost identical to the original so please visit her website and give her some love!

The directions for this recipe was modified for those who don’t have a stand mixer and to more closely replicate the methods that I saw used by the owners of Levain Bakery, as seen in this video.

Prep: 10 minutes

Cook: 20 minutes

Total: 2 hours

Makes: 8 cookies

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup (2 sticks) of unsalted butter
  • 1 cup brown sugar (light or dark)
  • ½ cup white sugar
  • 2 Grade AA Extra Large Eggs
  • 1 ½ cups cake flour 1
  • 1 ½ cups All-Purpose Flour
  • 1 tsp Cornstarch
  • ¾ tsp Baking Soda
  • ¾ tsp Table Salt
  • 2 cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips 2
  • 2 cups Walnuts 3

Directions:

  1. Cut your butter into smaller pieces and set aside, in the meantime measure out the rest of your ingredients (this will allow some time for the butter to soften a little) 4
  2. In a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, cream your butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until thoroughly combined (you can use a wooden spoon if you don’t have an electric mixer).
  3. Add eggs one at a time and mix again until thoroughly combined 5
  4. Sift in your flours, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt, and mix with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon until just fully combined (try not to over mix)
  5. Mix in your chocolate chips and walnuts
  6. Once your dough is combined thoroughly weigh out your cookies into 6 oz balls and place on a plate or baking sheet. They don’t need to be perfectly round or tightly packed 6
  7. Cover your dough balls with plastic wrap and let them chill in the fridge for at least 90 minutes but for best results let rest for 34 hours (Levain Bakery rests their cookies for 24 hours) 7
  8. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit on the bake setting with an inverted baking sheet placed on the middle rack 8
  9. Once the oven is preheated, space your cookies out evenly on a parchment lined baking sheet (I like to bake 4 at a time) and place on the inverted baking sheet. Bake for about 20-25 minutes checking every so often to make sure nothing is burning and adjust your time as needed. Depending on your oven, and how cold your dough is you might need more time so be sure to periodically monitor the cookies after around 14 minutes. Aim for a crispy exterior yet slightly underdone interior. If you have a convection oven you can turn it on for the first 4 minutes or so to get some nice color on the outside
  10. Remove from the oven and let cool on the baking sheet at least 10 minutes before enjoying or transferring to a cooling rack. They will be very hard to pick up and might fall apart if you attempt to move the cookies right away before they have had time to harden a bit. This is also a great time to sprinkle the cookies with a little bit of flaky salt if you wish.

Recipe and Research Notes:

  1. You can substitute cake flour with All Purpose Flour if you don’t have any. Cake flour just has less protein (7-9%) than AP flour (10-12%) which would just lead to less gluten development and will give your cookies a slightly softer and fluffier texture.
  2. Many of the other recipes I found online include a wide array of chocolates from milk to dark chocolate. While chocolates with higher cacao content will give you that famous chocolate melt effect you see in the cookies the owners themselves have said that they use a semi-sweet chocolate chip so I wouldn’t worry about going out and finding fancy chocolate chips.
  3. You can elect to roughly chop your walnuts if you wish but once again in the video you can see that the owners appear to pour the walnuts into their dough whole. Some recipes also will instruct you to remove the skin but they appear to have the skins on in the video and who has the time for that?
  4. Most of the recipes I viewed online indicate that you should use very cold butter for these cookies similar to the process when you are making a scone. In my mind this would take much longer and be much more intensive on the motor of the hand mixer so I think letting the butter soften slightly while you prepare your other ingredients wouldn’t be the end of the world, especially since we are chilling the dough for so long. Granted I am not an experienced baker so maybe I’m wrong.
  5. Another reason I decided to use Modern Honey’s recipe was because of this step. While many of the copycat recipes have you add the eggs at the last possible step to “prevent” gluten development in the video they add the eggs after creaming the sugar and butter. Sure you might be developing a little more gluten this way but when you rest the cookies for at least 12 hours the gluten will relax a lot anyway I think.
  6. I have seen many videos where people will either try to form the dough into perfect and or tightly packed balls but I just elect to grab them and shape them haphazardly like the owners did in their video. In their own words “keep it nice and loose and airy” which I think helps add to the craggly texture of their cookies.
  7. Someone in the comments of one of the videos I watched claims that at Levain Bakery they rest their cookies in a walk in fridge for 24 hours before they are baked. I’m not sure where they got this intel but there is truth in that long rest times in the refrigerator will lead to tastier cookies. In an transcript from NPR that was linked in the video a food scientist talks about how a secret to great cookie dough is to let it stand in the refrigerator for “12, 24, [or] 36″ hours”. Longer rest times will lead to your cookies getting darker in color, more uniform, and enhance the flavor. The science behind that cookie doughs are very low moisture and only get their water from the eggs and butter. Therefore letting it stand for a long time gives the dry ingredients a chance to really hydrate even more and join the flavors together better and more evenly than baking the cookies right away.
  8. While a little grainy in the old video you can see the owners place the cookies on a stack of inverted sheet pans, I’m not entirely sure why but they do, so I will too (maybe to give the cookies a crispy bottom).
The owners put the cookies into the oven elevated by sheet pans

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