These decadent double chocolate chip cookies are thick, soft, and rich. They taste very close to the dark chocolate chocolate chip cookies from Levain Bakery in New York City.
As you may recall, I visited NYC a few months ago and tried Levain Bakery’s famous chocolate chip cookies. While I loved their signature cookie and could finally understand the hype and long lines, the cookie I most adored was the dark chocolate chocolate chip cookie. It was so rich, decadent, and chocolatey.
Just look at them!
I immediately knew I had to try to replicate them.
While I was eating my Levain Bakery cookies, I was also analyzing every bite, trying to determine why they are so special. I think their appeal is that they taste like regular home baked cookies rather than more cheffy gourmet cookies, and yet they aren’t quite like your typical homemade chocolate chip cookie recipe. They are crisp on the outside and yet very soft in the center. The chips stay gooey and half-melted. They are thick and rich, but have a lightness to the crumb. These suggest they are using a few extra steps beyond the typical recipe to achieve these characteristics.
There are many copycat recipes out there. After trying a few, this one is the one I found most promising and incorporated many techniques I suspected when analyzing the cookies. When the cookies are first baked, they are thick, crispy on the outside, with a still-soft center, and a light crumb. They stay so for a few hours, but eventually they did lose the crispy exterior and the crumb became denser. The ones I had from Levain Bakery managed to maintain that just-baked texture almost a full day. So I’m still not quite sure how Levain Bakery does it.
But don’t get me wrong. These cookies are delicious. Definitely worth sharing and gifting to chocolate lovers. I’ll be making them for holiday cookie gifting this year!
How to Make This Levain Bakery Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies
INGREDIENTS
- 1 cup unsalted cold butter cut into small cubes
- 1 cup packed light brown sugar
- ½ cup graulated white sugar
- 2 large eggs
- ½ cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder try to use a premium brand for richer flavor
- 1 cup cake flour
- 1½ cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp cornstarch
- ¾ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 cup semisweet chocolate chunks or roughly chopped chocolate
- 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
INSTRUCTIONS
- Preheat oven to 410°F.
- In a mixing bowl of a stand mixer, cream together butter and sugars on high speed until light and fluffy (about 3-4 minutes). Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
- Add in cocoa, cake flour, all-purpose flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt and set mixer on lowest speed setting to stir until dough is just combined (please note in the video the mixing is sped up to keep the video short). You want the dough to be smooth and uniform in color, but you don’t want to overmix it. Stir in chocolate chunks.
- Place the dough in the fridge for 15 minutes to chill.
- Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats. Measure out about 4.3 oz of dough and roll into a ball. Place several chocolate chips on top and adjust chips until the dough weighs 4.5 oz.
- Place dough ball onto baking sheet. You will place four on each baking sheet, spaced about 2 inches apart. You should have enough dough to make 8 cookies, but it is best to weigh the balls so that they are all the same size and will cook evenly.
- Bake the cookies for about 10-11 minutes, or until the surface is dry and cookies look almost set. Remove and let cookies cool on the baking sheets (if you try to remove them they will likely break apart). Allow cookies to cool about 15-20 minutes so that they can set. Then remove and enjoy.
Recipe’s Notes
Recipe slightly adapted from Modern Honey
I recently made these cookies with only white sugar and no brown sugar (so 1 1/2 cups white sugar total) and found the cookies tasted even more like the original.
