Levain Bakery

What's in the box: A box of Levain's large, thick cookies, typically an assortment built around signature flavors like chocolate chip walnut.

Levain Bakery is the New York bakery behind the thick, oversized cookies that have drawn lines on the Upper West Side since 1995. Its best known cookie is the chocolate chip walnut, a dense, craggy round with a soft center, and the rest of the lineup follows the same hefty style. Online, the bakery ships nationwide and sells a Signature Cookie Assortment, a cookie tin gift set, a build your own box option, and limited runs such as a Peanut Butter Lovers Assortment. For recurring deliveries there is a Cookie Club, but the site does not spell out its schedule, flavor rotation, or terms up front, so read the details before you sign up. The bakery suggests eating the cookies right away or warming them to bring back the gooey middle, which is good advice, since a shipped cookie will not quite match one fresh from the oven. Levain also handles corporate gifts, individually wrapped event favors, catering, and weddings, and runs bakeries in New York and several other cities. The appeal here is a well known product with a strong reputation, not variety or discovery. If you want to try new bakers each month, look elsewhere. If you want rich, reliably good cookies arriving at your door or a friend's, Levain is a safe choice.