I looked at a lot of online knockoff or copycat recipes for these cookies. All the recipes were pretty much the same, but I decided to go with my own slightly different conglomeration. But the main thing all of the recipes had in common, was that every author almost guaranteed that these would be the best chocolate chip cookies you would ever taste. And I have to admit, they are totally amazing. These babies make it completely clear why Levain Bakery has helped put New York City on the map. And why you should spend absolutely no time deciding to whip up a batch at your earliest convenience.

When you look at the ingredient list, almost all of the ingredients are exactly what you would expect to find. Ok, not the use of cold butter or necessarily a bit of cornstarch, or even the use of cake flour. But there certainly aren’t any peculiar ingredients, like half a cup of parsnip puree or anything like that. Pretty standard ingredients found in many baked goods. So what makes these cookies different? Well first of all, they’re big cookies. And I bake mine half as large as the Levain Bakery offers. And these cookies are pulled out of the oven before the center gets fully set. And the ratio of nuts and chocolate chips to dough is greater than called for in most of the chocolate chip cookie recipes I have previously made. And believe me, I have made a lot of chocolate chip cookies over the years!

So are these now my favorite chocolate chip walnut cookies? You bet your sweet – – – they are! And I believe they will become your favorite too. They are just that delicious. And very easy to prepare, especially if you have a #10 ice cream scoop.

Now you know I don’t have any advertisements on this site. And I am not specifying any brand of scoop that I think you should purchase. But if you do a lot of cookie baking, or make meatballs, muffins, and cupcakes, to name a few uses for ice cream scoops, you should own a few scoops in different sizes. Makes life a lot easier when you have the right tools. Remember, Christmas is coming. And I know my Mr. Santa always loves hints at about this time of year. And being the good wife, I never fail to help him out! And usually my hints are for gifts that most people would find unromantic. But I figure, that’s their problem. Anything that makes my life easier or more pleasant is a gift I would never think to discourage. Besides, romantic gifts are overrated in my opinion. Give me practical gifts. Like a round trip ticket to Iceland, for example. That and a new frying pan are practical gifts I would never consider turning down! 

So as always, make life pleasant for those around you. Create a home atmosphere that is comfortable, cozy, and inviting. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t appreciate a smile or a kind word. Simple gestures, but very effective ways to spread joy to those you love. Peace and love to all.   

1 c. (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

¾ c. light brown sugar

½ c. granulated sugar

2 lg. eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1½ c. cake flour (fluffed)

1¼ c. unbleached all-purpose flour (fluffed)   

1 T. cornstarch

1 tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. coarse sea salt

2 c. walnut halves, roughly chopped

2 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips (a 12-ounce bag) (I prefer Guittard semi-sweet baking chips)  

Place the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar in the bowl of your stand mixer. Using the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars on medium low speed until smooth and completely blended, 2-3 minutes. Add the eggs and vanilla. Beat just until the eggs are incorporated with the butter/sugar mixture.

In a small mixing bowl, whisk the cake flour, all-purpose flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together. Add to the wet ingredients and mix only until combined. Add the walnuts and slowly mix until combined. Add the chocolate chips, and again, mix only until combined.

And now the hard decision has to happen. Do you want cookies the size that made the Levain Bakery in NYC famous? Or do you want to make a smaller version for us normal folks. My choice – smaller. But for those purists out there, I’m providing both ways to enjoy these marvelous cookies.

Purist (8 cookies per batch) (these would make some humongous damn cookies!)

Divide the dough into 8 equal parts, about 6-ounces each. Line two half sheet baking pans (roughly 18 x 13-inches) with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.  Use your hands to shape the dough. The cookies are meant to be roughly shaped. Place 4 on each pan. Do not flatten the dough. Refrigerate for about an hour. Start heating your oven to 400 degrees after the cookies have been cooling in the refrigerator for about 45 minutes.

Bake in the pre-heated 400 degree oven for 11-13 minutes on regular bake or a bit shorter time on convection bake. The cookies are done when the top is a bit golden and the bottom is also golden. The top should look done, but the cookies should not be fully set. Do not over bake.

Remove from oven and let cool for at least 15 minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a wire rack. This allows the inside of the cookies to bake a bit more and helps prevent breaking the cookies while they are being transferred to the cooling rack. They should still be plenty gooey inside. Serve slightly warm if possible.   

Bigger than normal chocolate chip cookies, but half the size of Purist (16 cookies per batch)

Divide the dough into 16 equal parts, about 3-ounces each. (Or as equally portioned as possible.) Drop dough onto parchment paper or silicone mat lined baking pans about 3 inches apart. (I used three half sheet (roughly 18 x 13-inch) baking pans. Six cookies on sheets 1 & 2. Four cookies on sheet number 3.) Do not flatten the dough. (I round the dough in my #10 ice cream scoop and proceed from there. Cheating I know, but I’m lazy!) Refrigerate for about an hour. (To make life easier on myself, and because I don’t have room in my refrigerator for 3 sheet pans, I plop the balls of dough close together on one of the parchment paper lined pans. Then I refrigerate the whole mess. When I’m ready to bake the little darlings, I take 6 from the fridge and place on another of the parchment paper lined baking sheets. The others dough balls I just leave in the fridge until I am ready to bake them off.)  

Bake in a pre-heated 400 degree oven. I found, after baking each of the three pans of cookies a different way, that 6 minutes regular heat and 4 minutes convection heat worked the best for me. But you may find your oven works differently than mine. Just don’t overbake the cookies. So anywhere from 9 minutes all convection, or 11 minutes regular oven should work out fine for you. Just be aware, the top should look done, but the cookies should not be fully set.   

Remove from oven and let cool for at least 15 minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a wire rack.

Store the completely cooled cookies in an airtight container on your kitchen counter. Then you will always be reminded that they are there just for lifting the lid. You don’t want them to go stale after all!  

So when I thought about what kind of cookie I wanted to make for our upcoming trailer trip, I decided an oatmeal cookie would be absolutely perfect. But I wanted an oatmeal cookie that was just a little different than how I usually doctor up my oatmeal cookies for more flavor. So no chocolate chips. No peanut butter. But maybe introduce a lot more spice action.

So I thought some kind of dried fruit would be nice. But not the usual suspects, like dried cranberries, or dried cherries, or dried blueberries. It just happened that I had a few thin slices of dried apple in my stash of dried this and that. Not enough to feature in a major cooking project. But too much to simply discard. So I thought, why not an apple presence in an oatmeal cookie? But the apple slices, in many ways, except flavor, resembled shoe leather. (OK, I’ve never tasted shoe leather, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t taste like dried apples!) So I knew that something had to be done to soften up the chopped up apple slices a bit. And what better way to macerate fruit than by a small application of some type of booze. And since I just happened to have some spiced rum on hand, I felt it was the best bet since the cookie recipe I was developing already had ground cinnamon and ground nutmeg as important flavor additives. And really, can a bit of spiced rum ever hurt? I think not! And of course, you can’t really taste the rum. It’s more like you just kinda sorta know there is a just a little something extra in the mix. 

So if you too are a fan of oatmeal cookies, you are going to love these babies. They are soft, but chewy, sweet, but not too sweet, and between the golden raisins and the dried apples, there is just a nice fruit note in every bite. And of course there is a delightful crunch from the chopped walnuts. In other words, these cookies are yum!

So as always, keep having fun in your kitchen, keep helping your friends and family cope with the devastating circumstances of life right now, and take especially good care of yourself. You can’t be of any value to anyone, including yourself, if you let down your guard or start feeling that all is out of your control. Everything is not out of your control. You can still choose to be happy. You can still choose to be positive. You can still choose to be that one person who helps lift the spirits of those around you. And yes it’s not fair. Why should you always have to be the designated good guy? Well, dear readers, first of all, let me explain that life is not always fair. (You’ve probably already figured that out for yourself.) But we are cooks. We are used to nourishing bodies and minds through the food we fix. But there is even more that we can do. We can smile. We can say please and thank you. We can liberally offer praise. We can offer help, when help is needed. We can refuse to let the little everyday “revoltin’ developments” (thank you Chester A. Riley) get to us. And no it isn’t easy. But it is so much better than the alternative. And of course after a long day of helping others and listening to and watching all the news about fires, the pandemic, racial injustice, and the current political catastrophe, there’s always the option of quietly going into your bedroom closet to let out a silent scream. I find that often helps me when dealing with all of life’s little unpleasantries. Well that and a big old bowl of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream.

Peace and love to all.  

2 T. spiced or regular rum

½ c. chopped dried apples (I use thin dried apple slices, cut into small pieces)

1¾ c. unbleached all-purpose flour (fluffed)

½ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. fine sea salt

2 tsp. ground cinnamon

½ tsp. ground nutmeg

1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened slightly 

1 c. brown sugar, packed

½ c. granulated sugar

2 lg. eggs

1½ tsp. vanilla extract

3 c. rolled old fashioned oats

¾ c. chopped walnuts

½ c. golden raisins

Mix the spiced rum and apples together in a small bowl. Set aside.

Lightly grease or line baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.

In a small mixing bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg together.  

In the bowl of your electric stand mixer, cream the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together until soft. Mix in one of the eggs, then blend in the second egg and vanilla extract. Add flour mixture and mix just until combined. Add the oats, chopped walnuts, golden raisins, and the macerated dried apples (including any liquid that may remain).

Form dough balls with a small ice cream scoop, and place on prepared baking sheets about 2-inches apart.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven until golden brown on edges and nearly set, about 10-12 minutes. (Center should look a bit under-baked.)

Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

I’m back at it. Making a dessert that includes peanut butter. I simply can’t seem to help myself because I’m such a devotee. Actually, since being confined to quarters since the covid-19 outbreak, I have been eating more sweets, and in generally eating more items from the forbidden food groups than is reasonable, even during a pandemic. Either that or my bathroom scale is lying to me, and somehow I doubt that since my jeans seem to be in accordance with the scale.  

We were social distancing with friends on Sunday afternoon, and while the guys (timE3 Jazz) were making music in Tim and Suzie’s back yard, the rest of us were spread out in lawn chairs having interesting conversations. There were two other people in attendance along with “the wives”. Devon, Tim and Suzie’s son, and his partner Octavia were also enjoying the music and comradery. And of course there was wonderful food throughout the afternoon. At one point as we were discussing food, Octavia mentioned that she’d heard a phrase used lately that pretty much summed up my current eating style. People were saying that they had been eating like “an unchaperoned nine year old boy at a birthday party”. And I thought to myself, that’s exactly what I have been doing. I’ve been eating like there is no tomorrow and no consequence for my bad behavior. (It may have something to do with emotional eating. It is after all a very difficult time for everyone right now.)

Well at my age there is a consequence for almost any excess you care to mention. Too much lifting, my back twinges. Too much walking down hill, my knees hurt. Too much sitting at my computer, my hips start to ache. Too much food, my bathroom scale starts to scream if I even look at it! Unlike when I was in my 20s, 30s, 40s, and even into my 50s, excess pounds could be shed by just cutting consumption for a few days. Since my 60s, my body has been absolutely reluctant to part with even an ounce. So what makes me think that just because it’s an unprecedented pandemic, my body is suddenly going to acquire the metabolism of a pygmy shrew? (Oh what fools we mortals be!!!)

Anyway, I decided maybe it’s time to once again take command of my body and just say no to excesses of any kind. And the first and foremost is to stay away from my refrigerator for longer periods of time while I still have some dignity left. (And I can still fit into my jeans.)

But before I stop talking and thinking about food (at least for the rest of the afternoon), let me tell you a bit about these bars. They are delicious and easy to prepare. Nothing more to say.  

Let me leave you with this quote from Winston Churchill. “The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

Please consider Mr. Churchill’s words very carefully as you approach the upcoming November election. It is a critical time for our country. Regardless of your political affiliation, listen for the truth.

And remember, there is never going to be a perfect candidate. No platform is ever going to match your every wish or belief. But intelligent people who are familiar with listening and learning, are going to make more informed decisions than politicians who lead from ignorance and spite.

Ask yourself these simple questions:

Which candidate would I trust more with my personal safety? Which would I trust more to care about my immediate and future medical needs? Which will attempt to take care of our planet so that future generations will have clean air to breathe, food to eat, and a place to sleep? Which candidate will consider my basic needs before the greater monetary aspirations of a wealthy few?

These seem like very personal, all about me, questions. But when it comes right down to it, it really is about each and every person individually. And if policies and plans make life better for everyone – that includes you. If policies and plans diminish resources and make it even more difficult for individuals and families to have their basic needs met; that affects you too. Maybe not directly, if you are one of the lucky ones. But someone in your family or circle of friends is going to be adversely affected. Listen for the truth. Peace and love to all.  

1 c. unbleached all-purpose flour

½ c. + 2 T. rolled oats

6 T. brown sugar, packed

½ c. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

6 oz. (¾ lg. pkg.) cream cheese, room temperature

¼ c. granulated sugar

1 egg

2 T. creamy peanut butter (not the natural kind)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

½ c. semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used mini chocolate chips)

½ c. peanut butter chips

In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix the flour, oatmeal, and brown sugar together. Add the butter and mix on medium speed until the mixture resembles small clumps. Measure out ¾ cup of the crumb mixture and set aside in a separate bowl.

Pour the remaining crumbs into a lightly greased 8×8-inch baking pan (glass preferably) and press evenly into the bottom of the dish. Bake for 15 minutes in a pre-heated 350 degree oven (metal), 325 degrees for glass.

Meanwhile while the crust is baking, in the same mixing bowl, cream the room temperature cream cheese and granulated sugar together on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add the egg, peanut butter, and vanilla extract. Mix well. Stir in the chocolate and peanut butter chips.  

When the crust is done baking, remove from the oven and spread the cream cheese mixture evenly over the crust. Top with the reserved oatmeal crumbs.    

Using the convection option if you have it, bake the bars for 25-30 minutes or until the middle is set and the crumb topping is a light golden brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely on a wire rack. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Please note: If you want to make a peanut butter bar, omit the chocolate chips and replace them with additional peanut butter chips. If you want an all chocolate crumb bar, replace the peanut butter with Nutella and use only chocolate chips.