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These are the Best Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies or Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies. Regardless of which way you say it. They are thick, fluffy, crispy, chocolatey, and nutty. Get ready to learn how to make an incredible chocolate chip cookie.
Levain cookies are extremely popular for the best chocolate chip cookies in New York City. Their thick, chewy, and rich chocolate flavor. My recipe is an homage to their thick cookies. It is a great way to bring these New York City treats to your kitchen.
I’ve done some extreme digging to ensure I got as close to the originals as possible with this copycat recipe.
Oh, and I know these are the best chocolate chip walnut cookie recipe because my friend who hates nuts baked in anything said after she realized she tasted the walnuts see she decided some cold milk would be best to wash down her warm cookie.
Table of Contents
Key Ingredients:
To make these special chocolate chip walnut cookies, you will need the following essential ingredients:
Light Brown Sugar
Traditionally, I love to use dark brown sugar, but they use light brown sugar at the Levian bakery, which gives these cookies a wonderful delicate maple flavor.
Raw Cane Sugar
I prefer to use raw cane sugar because the natural nutrients and minerals haven’t been stripped out the way they are with granulated sugar.
Large Eggs
Eggs are an essential ingredient in baking. They provide texture, body, color, and flavor to these tasty cookies.
Unsalted Butter
I use European-style butter. My go-to is Lewis Roads Unsalted Butter.
Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
Several people use cake flour when recreating this recipe, but I find that all-purpose flour does the job through testing. I only use unbleached flour because the “bleaching” process is natural rather than chemical.
Cornstarch
Adding a little cornstarch goes a long way. The cornstarch gives the batter gives these cookies a stable base.
Dark Chocolate Chips
Semi-sweet chocolate chips are what’s used in the original recipe for Levian cookies. But I love dark chocolate because it has a higher cocoa percentage.
Walnuts
Walnuts provide a nice crunch and texture to these cookies.
Ingredients for Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies :
To make the best chocolate chip cookies ever, you need a recipe that’s proven to produce deliciousness. Here’s the ingredients you'll need to make these delicious chocolate chip walnut cookies.
- Light brown sugar
- Raw cane sugar
- European-style unsalted butter
- Large eggs
- Unbleached all-purpose flour
- Cornstarch
- Baking powder
- Baking soda
- Kosher salt
- Chopped walnuts
- Dark chocolate chips
Common One to One Substitutions:
Whether you’re missing an ingredient or looking to get creative, here are a few of the most common substitutions for this dish:
- Feel free to use gluten-free flour as a swap for unbleached flour.
- You can use semi-sweet, bittersweet, or milk chocolate chips as a swap for dark chocolate chips.
- You can use almonds, peanuts, macadamia nuts as a swap for walnuts.
- You can use granulated sugar as a swap for raw cane sugar.
- You can use traditional unsalted butter as a swap for the European Style butter.
- Baking your cookies on foil instead of parchment paper will still produce a great chocolate chip cookie.
- No cooling rack, no problem. Remove one of your oven racks before preheating to use as a rack to cool cookies on.
How to Make Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies:
Making chocolate chip walnut cookies at home doesn’t have to be intimidating. It’s very close to a traditional chocolate chip cookies recipe. These are just the size of baseballs. Here is what you need to make them at home successfully.
Step 1: In a large bowl or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the light brown sugar, sugar, and butter medium until fluffy. Add the eggs, mix until smooth.
Step 2: In a large bowl, combine flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking soda. Add the flour and pulse mix the flour 5 times to ensure the flour doesn’t fly out the bowl. Add the chocolate chips and walnuts, increase mixer speed to medium. The dough is finished once chocolate and walnuts are evenly distributed in the dough.
Step 3: Measure each dough ball into 4 oz. portions, using a dry ½ cup measuring if you don’t have a scale. Roll the cookie dough balls and place them on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Pop in the fridge for 40 minutes.
Step 4: Preheat oven to 375°F. Place 6-9 cookies on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Bake cookies for 18-20 minutes, until golden brown. Cookies should be thick with the minimum spread. Repeat until all cookies are baked. Cool for 5 minutes on a rack to cool before enjoying with a glass of cold milk!
How to store
Storage
If you’re looking to make this dish in advance, you can easily store it in the fridge or freezer until you’re ready to eat. Before storing hot foods, you should always let them cool down to room temperature and store them in an airtight container.
Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies: You can store your chocolate chip cookies in an airtight container for 7 days. You can freeze your cookies in an airtight freezer storage bag after they cool. Cookies will be good for 3 months. Thaw 24 hours before enjoying. Reheat your cookies by baking them in a 350°F-degree oven for 5-8 minutes until warm.
Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies Recipe Tips & Tricks:
Here are some of my top tips and tricks to help you make this dish:
- You want to use a high-quality chocolate chip because sugar causes cookies the spread as it heats up. That’s why I recommend using a 46% cacao semi-sweet chocolate chips because it contains more cacao than sugar.
- Buy an inexpensive oven thermometer and make sure your oven is heating to the correct temperature.
- Always bake cookies in the middle of the oven. It has the most even and consistent heat circulation.
- Using cold butter makes these cookies fluffy, thick, and chewy.
- These cookies will spread some as they bake. I recommend baking 9 at a time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about chocolate chip walnut cookies.
You can bake these cookies immediately. You do not need to chill the dough. However, since I recommend only baking 6 at a time. You should pop the other cookies in the fridge until the first batch comes out. I’ve made the recipe both ways, and it yields the same delicious chocolate chip walnut cookies.
Bleached flour is processed with a chemical called chlorine bleach. The flour can be treated with benzoyl peroxide or hydrogen peroxide. The bleaching process makes the flour whiter, so it doesn’t turn brown when exposed to air.
Unbleached flour is not chemically treated and remains a light yellow color. Cake flour has been bleached with chlorine but also sifted more finely than all-purpose or bread flour.
Cake flour is finely ground and comes bleached or unbleached but has an added ingredient to make cakes less dense. It also has the lowest amount of protein out of all the flours. Less protein is believed the yield a lighter and tender product.
The best kind of chocolate chips for cookies are ones that have a minimum of 42% cacao. It doesn’t matter whether it’s bittersweet, milk, semi-sweet, white, or dark chocolate.
Quality chocolate is crucial because you want a significant amount of cacao in your chips. If a chocolate chip has 60% cacao, the other 40% is sugar and emulsifiers. The least expensive chocolate chips will not mention a percentage for cacao because it’s the majority sugar.
Even sugar-free chocolate chips highlight the cacao percentage because more chocolate equals less sugar or sugar alcohols.
The evidence is in how well your chocolate chips melt after baking. Great chocolate chips will melt during baking, and even after the cookies have cooled off will still be melted.
For this reason, I usually only use dark chocolate chips for baking cookies because the minimum cacao will be 63%. My favorite brands to use are Guittard and Ghirardelli.
Inexpensive chocolate chips taste good and do the job, but you want to use quality ingredients when making something for people you love.
The invention of chocolate chip cookies is credited to Ruth Wakefield, who owned the Toll House restaurant in Whitman, Massachusetts first invented them. She added chopped semi-sweet chocolate to her favorite “Butter Drop Do” with the intention of the chocolate spreading through the cookie.
Instead, the chocolate held its shape, and the fame of her cookie recipe “Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies” became uber popular. In the 1940s, Ruth sold her rights for Toll House Trademark to Nestle.
Absolutely! Freeze your cookies after they’ve cooled off by placing them inside a freezer-safe storage bag for 3 months. Thaw before reheating them.
Cold butter is a thick chocolate chip cookie best friend. Why?
Two reasons: 1) Cold butter creates the fluffy, cakey texture for thick cookies.
2)When cold butter is baked in a hot oven, the water releases and creates steam, giving these cookies a lift to be taller.
This is the one time forgetting to take the butter out works in your favor.
The cornstarch reduces the amount of gluten that can form in the cookie dough. Adding cornstarch to your cookies will help them maintain their shape, and a tender chocolate chip cookie.
Latest Recipe Video:
Why are my cookies from spreading?
Your cookies can spread for a few reasons. However, if you followed this recipe, that shouldn’t be an issue. Here are a few reasons why they would spread:
- Not using cold butter
- Using too much butter
- Using room temperature butter
The cold butter helps these cookies stay light and fluffy. Since butter contains water, it begins to melt as it heats up by using cold butter and cornstarch in your cookie dough and cooling the cookie dough in the fridge. We’ve added a triple layer of protection to make sure the cookies do not spread too much. There will be some slight spreading as the cookies bake, but they should spread to the point they become a cookie cake.
For More Dessert Ideas:
If you're looking for more desserts to add to a dessert table. Here are some of my favorite crowd-pleasing desserts.
- Strawberry Whisky Cake
- Kitchen Sink Cookies
- Whiskey Banana Pudding
- Orange Strawberry Cupcakes with Mascarpone Icing
- Homemade Cinnamon Rolls
- New Orleans Bananas Fosters
I hope you’ve enjoyed this post as much as we did making our incredible chocolate chip walnut cookies. We wanted to share with you how easy it is to create a delicious batch of these mouthwatering, thick, and fluffy cookies that would be perfect for any occasion or just because! If you have any questions on the process, leave me a comment below or better yet-post your picture on Instagram with #thebestchocolatechipwalnutcookiesevermade (I can’t wait to see them!) Happy baking!
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Recipe:
Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies
Ingredients
- ¾ cup light brown sugar
- ¾ cup raw cane sugar
- 1 stick cold European-style unsalted butter
- 2 large eggs
- 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 cups toasted chopped walnuts
- 12 oz. dark chocolate chips
Instructions
- In a large bowl or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the light brown sugar, sugar, and butter medium until fluffy. Add the eggs, mix until smooth.
- In a large bowl, combine flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking soda. Add the flour and pulse mix the flour 5 times to ensure the flour doesn’t fly out the bowl. Add the chocolate chips and walnuts, increase mixer speed to medium. The dough is finished once chocolate and walnuts are evenly distributed in the dough.
- Measure each dough ball into 4 oz. portions, using a dry ½ cup measuring if you don’t have a scale. Roll the cookie dough balls and place them on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Pop in the fridge for 40 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 375°F. Place 6-9 cookies on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Bake cookies for 18-20 minutes, until golden brown. Cookies should be thick with the minimum spread. Repeat until all cookies are baked. Cool for 5 minutes on a rack to cool before enjoying with a glass of cold milk!
Notes
If you’re looking to make this dish in advance, you can easily store it in the fridge or freezer until you’re ready to eat. Before storing hot foods, you should always let them cool down to room temperature and store them in an airtight container. Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies: You can store your chocolate chip cookies in an airtight container for 7 days. You can freeze your cookies in an airtight freezer storage bag after they cool. Cookies will be good for 3 months. Thaw 24 hours before enjoying. Reheat your cookies by baking them in a 350°F-degree oven for 5-8 minutes until warm.
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