Help with creating perfect cookies - crispy outside, moist inside

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Hello, I am new to this fórum. Sorry for this being such a long post. I live in San Jose, Costa Rica and I am trying to recreate cookies from a famous cookie bakery in New York City. Similar to Levain bakery or Chip NYC bakery or Duchess Cookies, etc. I lived in New York City my whole life and moved to Costa Rica. Now I would like to open a cookie bakery here and am in the process of it, but I am having trouble with the récipes. I have been working on these récipes for a while now and am having problems with them being raw inside.

Costa rica is known for its rainy season, and my apartment is hot (because they are building the mini mall where i am going to open the bakery), and i try and close the doors also and put the fan on (no A/C yet) . I Will have some soon. There is probably more info I Will forget about while writing this, I have tried almost everything, and am continuing. Because I think it is humid, I am going to try and cook them at an even higher temperature tomorrow because I read that the moisture Will evaporate quicker like that… I Will update

First, San Jose is about 3,800 feet above sea level, but I just used a lot less leavener and the cookies seem to come out alright in form without sinking in the middle. But always raw !!!! I have cooked them on 400f, 375f and 350f and have alltered my récipe a million times. I start with normal thick cookie récipes from online..
I even browned half the butter to take out moisture from the cookie, and the middle still comes out raw. today I cooked some on 400f and the middle was still Little raw and it hit 200 degrees Fahrenheit in the center of the cookie... I do not get it. My oven is a Venix, its small, convection, and if i try and cook them longer then the outside of the cookie gets really ruined.. even on 375 the outside Will cook way too much and still tiny bit raw. on 350f they cook all the way through but the outside is so overcooked by then it taste like really crispy butter sugar cookie flavor.. ewww



The way i want them is like this bakery on Instagram @chipnewyorkcity

Crispy on the outside and soft moist on the inside (but not raw), sometimes their potos look a Little raw inside but not always, most of them arent raw at all in the middle, but slightly underbaked. I love their cookies.

I even hired a pastry chef in NY to help me with the recipes and his are a normal récipe using like 226g butter, 1 cup Brown sugar, ¼ cup White sugar, 2 cups all purpose flour, 1 cup cake flour, 2 eggs, baking soda, salt, etc. And they came out fully cooked on 375f for 15 mins, and my father went and tried them and loved them. Now if i did that récipe here in my venix oven in my hot humid apartment, they would be raw in the middle.



I dont know if the oven is too hot, or too powerful with the fan, or too small and powerful and hot, or the apartment is too hot or too humid, or the elevation, or the ingredients here, etc, but i need to get this right because it is going to be my business.


I have cooked them from frozen, from chilled, everything…


Here is an Example of the latest recipe
2 cups All purpose flour
1 cup Cake flour
1 tablespoon Cornstarch
1 teaspoon Baking Powder

1 teaspoon Salt
115g butter
115g butter (browned) so weighs les after
200g Brown Sugar
70g White Sugar
2 eggs (110g)
1 tablespoon Vanilla extract
300g Chocolate Chips kirkland semi sweet

Please help me, thank you so much if you read the whole thing, sorry for it being so long =/
 
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Hello, I am new to this fórum. Sorry for this being such a long post. I live in San Jose, Costa Rica and I am trying to recreate cookies from a famous cookie bakery in New York City. Similar to Levain bakery or Chip NYC bakery or Duchess Cookies, etc. I lived in New York City my whole life and moved to Costa Rica. Now I would like to open a cookie bakery here and am in the process of it, but I am having trouble with the récipes. I have been working on these récipes for a while now and am having problems with them being raw inside.

Costa rica is known for its rainy season, and my apartment is hot (because they are building the mini mall where i am going to open the bakery), and i try and close the doors also and put the fan on (no A/C yet) . I Will have some soon. There is probably more info I Will forget about while writing this, I have tried almost everything, and am continuing. Because I think it is humid, I am going to try and cook them at an even higher temperature tomorrow because I read that the moisture Will evaporate quicker like that… I Will update

First, San Jose is about 3,800 feet above sea level, but I just used a lot less leavener and the cookies seem to come out alright in form without sinking in the middle. But always raw !!!! I have cooked them on 400f, 375f and 350f and have alltered my récipe a million times. I start with normal thick cookie récipes from online..
I even browned half the butter to take out moisture from the cookie, and the middle still comes out raw. today I cooked some on 400f and the middle was still Little raw and it hit 200 degrees Fahrenheit in the center of the cookie... I do not get it. My oven is a Venix, its small, convection, and if i try and cook them longer then the outside of the cookie gets really ruined.. even on 375 the outside Will cook way too much and still tiny bit raw. on 350f they cook all the way through but the outside is so overcooked by then it taste like really crispy butter sugar cookie flavor.. ewww



The way i want them is like this bakery on Instagram @chipnewyorkcity

Crispy on the outside and soft moist on the inside (but not raw), sometimes their potos look a Little raw inside but not always, most of them arent raw at all in the middle, but slightly underbaked. I love their cookies.

I even hired a pastry chef in NY to help me with the recipes and his are a normal récipe using like 226g butter, 1 cup Brown sugar, ¼ cup White sugar, 2 cups all purpose flour, 1 cup cake flour, 2 eggs, baking soda, salt, etc. And they came out fully cooked on 375f for 15 mins, and my father went and tried them and loved them. Now if i did that récipe here in my venix oven in my hot humid apartment, they would be raw in the middle.



I dont know if the oven is too hot, or too powerful with the fan, or too small and powerful and hot, or the apartment is too hot or too humid, or the elevation, or the ingredients here, etc, but i need to get this right because it is going to be my business.


I have cooked them from frozen, from chilled, everything…


Here is an Example of the latest recipe
2 cups All purpose flour
1 cup Cake flour
1 tablespoon Cornstarch
1 teaspoon Baking Powder

1 teaspoon Salt
115g butter
115g butter (browned) so weighs les after
200g Brown Sugar
70g White Sugar
2 eggs (110g)
1 tablespoon Vanilla extract
300g Chocolate Chips kirkland semi sweet

Please help me, thank you so much if you read the whole thing, sorry for it being so long =/




ThiS recipe Is an attempt at those cookies from the same bakery. Give it a go!
 
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They’re very quick! So perhaps give it a go. But thinkImg of it, if you’re abroad you may get a different result based on the flour you have and egg weights etc.

It’s so annoying that recipes aren’t easily copied because of differences in key ingredients between countries.

Give it a go though if you’re able to and see what happens!
 
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You seriously did not hire a pastry chef from New York. You hired a fraud. No professional pastry chef would mix metric (226g butter) with volume (2 cups all purpose flour).

A professionally trained chef would not even use a recipe.
There are NO RECIPES in commercial baking. Commercial baking is all formulas, all written in baker’s percentages, with DDT noted.

The other thing that is so obvious here is any recipe you use has to be adjusted for high altitude. And any professional chef knows that. I see the recipe the so called professional you hired was not adjusted for altitude. And the reason I know that is the measurement is in volume. The only way you can adjust a formula for altitude is by using metric weight.
And because you are at high altitude your baking time and temperature is going to differ.

Recipes are for home bakers. They do not have any controls to ensure consistency batch after batch. And do not allow for scale of production. Recipes are unreliable and inconsistent so they are never used for production baking.

Not only were you given a recipe instead of a formula, but you were given a recipe with mixed measurements in it. And you are completely oblivious to the fact that you were taken in by a fraud. Your lack of baking knowledge is allowing people to take advantage of you.

Go take some professional baking lessons. You cannot create a business without knowing anything about the business you want to go into.

And one last word of advice. You cannot use poor quality ingredients to make a copy cat of this cookie. Cheap Kirkland compound chocolate chips are not going to cut it. If you are going to make a copy cat Levain cookie, you need to use a quality chocolate.

Also Jemma’s recipe is of course a recipe not a formula. It’s based on UK flour. The wheat in the UK has an exceptionally low protein. It’s significantly different from wheat in other parts of the world. again you know nothing about baking so you do not know how to compensate for these differences. And here in lies your problem you cannot make a business based on Internet recipes.
 
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You seriously did not hire a pastry chef from New York. You hired a fraud. No professional pastry chef would mix metric (226g butter) with volume (2 cups all purpose flour).

A professionally trained chef would not even use a recipe.
There are NO RECIPES in commercial baking. Commercial baking is all formulas, all written in baker’s percentages, with DDT noted.

The other thing that is so obvious here is any recipe you use has to be adjusted for high altitude. And any professional chef knows that. I see the recipe the so called professional you hired was not adjusted for altitude. And the reason I know that is the measurement is in volume. The only way you can adjust a formula for altitude is by using metric weight.
And because you are at high altitude your baking time and temperature is going to differ.

Recipes are for home bakers. They do not have any controls to ensure consistency batch after batch. And do not allow for scale of production. Recipes are unreliable and inconsistent so they are never used for production baking.

Not only were you given a recipe instead of a formula, but you were given a recipe with mixed measurements in it. And you are completely oblivious to the fact that you were taken in by a fraud. Your lack of baking knowledge is allowing people to take advantage of you.

Go take some professional baking lessons. You cannot create a business without knowing anything about the business you want to go into.

And one last word of advice. You cannot use poor quality ingredients to make a copy cat of this cookie. Cheap Kirkland compound chocolate chips are not going to cut it. If you are going to make a copy cat Levain cookie, you need to use a quality chocolate.

Also Jemma’s recipe is of course a recipe not a formula. It’s based on UK flour. The wheat in the UK has an exceptionally low protein. It’s significantly different from wheat in other parts of the world. again you know nothing about baking so you do not know how to compensate for these differences. And here in lies your problem you cannot make a business based on Internet recipes.


Wow thank you.. couldve been said in a nicer way, but thank you very much! This just helped me hahaha
 
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You seriously did not hire a pastry chef from New York. You hired a fraud. No professional pastry chef would mix metric (226g butter) with volume (2 cups all purpose flour).

A professionally trained chef would not even use a recipe.
There are NO RECIPES in commercial baking. Commercial baking is all formulas, all written in baker’s percentages, with DDT noted.

The other thing that is so obvious here is any recipe you use has to be adjusted for high altitude. And any professional chef knows that. I see the recipe the so called professional you hired was not adjusted for altitude. And the reason I know that is the measurement is in volume. The only way you can adjust a formula for altitude is by using metric weight.
And because you are at high altitude your baking time and temperature is going to differ.

Recipes are for home bakers. They do not have any controls to ensure consistency batch after batch. And do not allow for scale of production. Recipes are unreliable and inconsistent so they are never used for production baking.

Not only were you given a recipe instead of a formula, but you were given a recipe with mixed measurements in it. And you are completely oblivious to the fact that you were taken in by a fraud. Your lack of baking knowledge is allowing people to take advantage of you.

Go take some professional baking lessons. You cannot create a business without knowing anything about the business you want to go into.

And one last word of advice. You cannot use poor quality ingredients to make a copy cat of this cookie. Cheap Kirkland compound chocolate chips are not going to cut it. If you are going to make a copy cat Levain cookie, you need to use a quality chocolate.

Also Jemma’s recipe is of course a recipe not a formula. It’s based on UK flour. The wheat in the UK has an exceptionally low protein. It’s significantly different from wheat in other parts of the world. again you know nothing about baking so you do not know how to compensate for these differences. And here in lies your problem you cannot make a business based on Internet recipes.

And the pastrt chef did send everything in grams. I am the one that converted it to cups, teaspoons, etc.

So i do know some stuff, im just not a professional baker, i need one though!
 
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You seriously did not hire a pastry chef from New York. You hired a fraud. No professional pastry chef would mix metric (226g butter) with volume (2 cups all purpose flour).

A professionally trained chef would not even use a recipe.
There are NO RECIPES in commercial baking. Commercial baking is all formulas, all written in baker’s percentages, with DDT noted.

The other thing that is so obvious here is any recipe you use has to be adjusted for high altitude. And any professional chef knows that. I see the recipe the so called professional you hired was not adjusted for altitude. And the reason I know that is the measurement is in volume. The only way you can adjust a formula for altitude is by using metric weight.
And because you are at high altitude your baking time and temperature is going to differ.

Recipes are for home bakers. They do not have any controls to ensure consistency batch after batch. And do not allow for scale of production. Recipes are unreliable and inconsistent so they are never used for production baking.

Not only were you given a recipe instead of a formula, but you were given a recipe with mixed measurements in it. And you are completely oblivious to the fact that you were taken in by a fraud. Your lack of baking knowledge is allowing people to take advantage of you.

Go take some professional baking lessons. You cannot create a business without knowing anything about the business you want to go into.

And one last word of advice. You cannot use poor quality ingredients to make a copy cat of this cookie. Cheap Kirkland compound chocolate chips are not going to cut it. If you are going to make a copy cat Levain cookie, you need to use a quality chocolate.

Also Jemma’s recipe is of course a recipe not a formula. It’s based on UK flour. The wheat in the UK has an exceptionally low protein. It’s significantly different from wheat in other parts of the world. again you know nothing about baking so you do not know how to compensate for these differences. And here in lies your problem you cannot make a business based on Internet recipes.

And one more thing... its hard to get any chocolate chips here. I am going to have to buy chcolate bars and cut them up. Kirkland and Hersheys are like the only chocolate chips they have here .. lol
 
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Wow thank you.. couldve been said in a nicer way, but thank you very much! This just helped me hahaha

That was the nice version. :)

seriously, those wet cookies are more like a half baked scone, anything that wet is gonna have a soapy taste to it, undetected because it has enough sugar to cover it up. Be wary of chasing these fads, they go as quick as they came. Cupcakes?

The whole idea of cookies, for a bakery, is its something that can be made in bulk on slow days to give sales volume on busier days, make them on tuesday when theres a free oven to sell on friday when theres no oven time to spare.
A 6 oz wet cookie is going to have serious storage problems, its going to spoil long before it would if it was a real cookie.

Your best shot is to be a cafe, coffee and light lunch, sandwiches etc, with a few baked items, but not a bakery.
And theres a lot more money in coffee, scones and sandwiches, with very little skill required than commercial baking.
You can do very well in that regard.
 
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Wow thank you.. couldve been said in a nicer way, but thank you very much! This just helped me hahaha


@retired baker is right, that was my nice version. I sound harsh, but I’m trying to stop you from getting fleeced by the shysters out there.


You paid someone in another country to send you a basic home baker’s recipe. You cannot get a production formula from a home recipe.


You need a formula. Bakery’s have binders with formulas. On each page you should find 3 columns and some bare bones mixing instructions. And I mean the instructions are really minimal because the assumption is you’re a professional baker you know how to bake.


The first column of information is the baker’s percentages. This is the formula. These are what you protect. If your formulas are handled by anyone else you employ, make sure they sign non-disclosures and non-compete agreements in accordance with laws in your country. I guarantee everyone who works for Levain has to sign non-disclosures and non-compete agreements in order for Levain to protect their trade secrets on those cookies.


The second column will be the batch which should will be in metric. The batch size is up to you. In the US the standard cookie is 45g of dough. The standard batch is 100 cookies (4.5 kilos). But I make my cookies 80g. So really its up to you as to batch size.


Then third column on your formula should be your test batch. That will be about 20% of a batch. Whenever you make any changes to production, whether it’s a different brand of sugar or flour, or you hire a new employee, you run a test batch. You also periodically run test batches for quality checks.


But the key is a formula has to be developed and tested with your ingredients. You don’t just pay someone to write you a home version of a chocolate chip cookie recipe with the idea that you are going to make a business using it. A bakery consultant must be in your own country because they are responsible for developing the formula and testing it to make sure it meets your specifications BEFORE they turn it over to you. Anyone can copy and paste a home baker recipe from the internet. But creating a formula for production is custom work. You cannot copy and paste that crap from the internet because it doesn’t exist.


And that’s another thing, when you hire a consultant to develop a formula for you, they must also sign non-disclosure and non-compete And all the other confidentiality forms as well. If you do not secure and protect your formula with the consultant, nothing prevents them from using them.


Anyone with good professional training should be able to do what I described above. All professional pastry chefs know the difference between a recipe and a formula.


Now you understand why I say the person was a fraud and why you got ripped off? Yes,I am blunt, but it’s for your own good. Stop throwing your money away on shysters you meet on the internet claiming to be pastry chefs.


BTW, You can make a recipe into a production formula. But what you got isn’t even what you want to produce for sale. So it’s worthless.


Let me give you another piece of advice. This is not the cookie to start a business with because the invest is very high. You cannot use cheap chocolate for this cookie because it will be like biting into a ball of wax. The cost to produce the cookie is very high. Without a client base, you will make a huge upfront investment with little return on the dollar. This is not a product with a long shelf life. You cannot sit on this product. You start your business with a product that you can produce at a low cost; that you can produce quickly; sell a lot of fast. Levain started out as a bread bakery, not a cookie bakery. @retired baker is correct, look toward a food business that does not require such a highly specialized skill. Baking is specialized and very expensive to start up.
 
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I must say, that both of us have been incredibly naive about what it takes to start a baking business. Thank goodness for this forum because I literally had NO CLUE what I was doing, and NO CLUE how complicated it is and how much is involved in making sure that you produce consistent results.

I’ve taken a break, until I gather together all of the essential agents, apparatus and a thorough understanding of DDT, adequate fermentation, frying etc. Thankfully, NorcalBaker has sent me some amazing information about all of this so I need to really sit down and go through it all thoroughly.

I’ve realised though, that without those things I’m wasting my time because as Norcal said my results were unreliable etc and it was just hit and miss.

I definitely wouldn’t consider starting a business until you have a thorough understanding of all of the key elements. In fact, starting a home business is one thing, but opening a bakery! You must get qualified and do courses first otherwise you will end up wasting an incredible amount of money and your baking reputation will be on the line because your results won’t be consistent. I ordered a bad cake from a lady a few months ago and I haven’t been back since .

I once fried a whole box of doughnuts that were raw inside, my cooker was playing up! It was overheating the oil massively even on a medium low heat, luckily these were given to a family member.
Can you imagine if I had sold them!

And I agree with @retiredbaker in that cookies won’t sustain an entire shop. They’re sort of a sideline bake, and it’s unusual for an entire shop to be devoted to the sale of cookies.

He has also told me many times that so much goes into starting up a business and we both are essentially trying to go in blind!

If I would you, I would definitely take some courses, get qualified, write up a SOLID business plan, make sure that you have formulas not recipes as NorcalBaker said and that they’re DAMN good, invest in quality equipment and DO YOUR MARKET RESEARCH!

My friend opened a dessert place without doing any market research in the local area, she rushed into it and her desserts weren’t great at all as a result of this.
I knew the first day that I visited that the business wouldn’t last and literally after a few months, she sold her share! Then shortly after it shut down completely and is now a Polish delicatessen.

I hope it all goes well though! I’m an absolute perfectionist and I wouldn’t dream of selling my products unless they are really something divine.
I would advise you to aim for the same thing because there are so many people selling desserts, so many bakeries, coffee shops etc that if you want to stand out you really need to have that special menu! Otherwise you risk losing so much money.

Keep us updated with what you decide to do!
 
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hello! My family is from Costa Rica! :D

I am too in the process of opening a cookie business with the same NYC style cookies! I've done LOTS of testing trying to achieve the Levain/Chip NYC cookies.

At first I was doing the whole raw centered cookie but after eating so much I found it disgusting and something I don't want to offer. I found CHIP and fell in love with the look of the cookie...thick, cooked interior and a nice outer crust. I tried PLENTY of times trying to achieve this cookie. And this is what I have found:

1. There was plenty of negative reviews stating that their cookies were like scones and very dry. So that made me feel better about having a very very slight undercooked cookie and stopped me from trying so hard to achieve their cookie (phew).
2. Use 2 sticks of cold butter & 3 cups of flour
3. Use a very large cookie scooper (to get the CHIP NYC look). Create a rough ball for Levain
4. Freeze your cookie scoops for at least 30 min. Most recipes say at least 2 hours but I never found a difference
5. Use parchament paper. For some reason silicone mats make the cookies spread..at least for mine
6. Bake at 350 for 18 mins. Rotate pan halfway
7. Let the cookies sit for at least 30-45 mins. This will help the center firm up and not be gooey


Hope this helps! Good Luck!
 
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Be wary of chasing fads, NYC Crumbs cupcakes had 79 stores all over NYC and the country and all closed abruptly.
The concept was basically stupid, build a business around a one trick fad, all fads expire, thats why they're called fads.
Other cupcake stores that diversified are still operating .
 
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Be wary of chasing fads, NYC Crumbs cupcakes had 79 stores all over NYC and the country and all closed abruptly.
The concept was basically stupid, build a business around a one trick fad, all fads expire, thats why they're called fads.
Other cupcake stores that diversified are still operating .

Yup, pretty much out here on the West Coast all the cupcake only shops have closed up as well. There is only one chain in California that seems to be holding on. But they branched out and started doing ice cream as well. There’s no future in a one trick pony.
 

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