I will confess I have never actually had a cookie from Levain Bakery. 🙂 I see these big chocolate chip cookies all the time on pinterest though and they look so delicious. I thought I’d try making a variation on the common copycat recipe.
These are 6 oz of dough, so as you can see in the picture they pretty much fill a small plate. I’m fully capable of eating one myself, but probably shouldn’t. I assume these are meant to be shared. The ingredients in these is pretty standard for chocolate chip cookies, other than using some cake flour. Cake flour gives a softer texture to baked goods and helps to keep these very tender. Leaving the centers under baked also ensures a soft cookie.
The standard recipe for these includes walnuts. To be completely honest, I’m a bit of a chocolate chip cookie purist and I prefer them without nuts. Don’t get me wrong they are good with nuts! I just prefer not to interfere with the chocolate. I did decide to use pecans in these today though. Pecans are kind of my one exception for nuts in my cookies. I think these would be good with walnuts, they are good with pecans and I think they’d be good with no nuts too… so do what you like.
I used my kitchen scale to weigh these. As I have mentioned before, I use it so much. I love this one:
While writing this I realized I have yet to share my number one favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. I will have to do that soon. I have tried so many variations and recipes over the years and my family always requests that next time I just make the usual ones. 🙂
Levain Bakery Chocolate Chip Cookie Copycat
Ingredients
- 1 cup cold butter cut into small pieces
- 3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup cake flour
- 1 3/4 cup AP flour
- 1 tsp cornstarch
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 cups pecans
- 2 cups chocolate chips
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350 and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, add butter and sugars. Cream until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Since you are dealing with cold butter, start on low speed for about 30 seconds. Switch to medium speed for another 30 seconds and then high speed for 3-4 minutes.
- Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl. Add in eggs. Mix on medium speed until incorporated.
- Add in cake flour, all purpose flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. Mix on low until barely mixed.
- Add in pecans and chocolate and mix on the lowest speed until mixed.
- You can either divide dough into 8 equal pieces, or I weighed out the dough on my scale. Each dough ball should weigh 6 ounces. You should grab the dough by the handful until you reach 6 ounces and lightly form a very loose ball. Make sure to keep it loose as the cookies should be airy and not compact.
- Place 2 on a sheet because they spread into big cookies.
- Bake only one sheet at a time in the middle row of the oven, for about 12-13 minutes. The tops of the cookies should be a light brown and the dough should look cooked, but the cookies should not be fully set. Let cookies cool at least 15 minutes. This gives them a chance to set so that you can remove the cookies without them breaking and will also allow inside of the dough to cook a little more. Make sure you don't move the cookies before they are set. They should still be gooey inside even after you wait 15 minutes. Cookies are best eaten warm.
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