This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.
These Levain Bakery Rocky Road Cookies are rich, thick, soft, chewy chocolate cookies with semi-sweet chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, and cashews. The best Levain Bakery Copycat Rocky Road Cookie Recipe!
If you have followed Modern Honey for a while now, you know that the very first recipe I shared in 2015 was my Levain Bakery Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookie Recipe. It was one that I perfected and recipe tested for months and months to get it just right.
Years ago, I was in New York City to film a show in Food Network Studios after I won the Perfect Cookie Contest. As I was getting my makeup done, I was asking all of the producers and makeup and hair people, where the best places were to eat in New York City.
They told me hands down the best place to buy a chocolate chip cookie in the city is Levain Bakery. They told me how unique this chocolate chip cookie was and I literally couldn’t wait to try it! The next morning, we made the trek to the Upper East Side and found chocolate chip cookie heaven.
Of course, being a cookie connoisseur and a self-proclaimed baking nerd, I set out to figure out how they make their cookies. I am a researcher by nature and I went to my kitchen and went to work! I tweaked it again and again and even played with the oven heat by a couple of degrees. You wouldn’t believe how many cookies I baked in a quest to perfect them at home.
I was so excited to create my knock-off version of the OG Levain Bakery Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe. I am grateful that it has always been in the TOP 10 of my Most Popular Recipes on Modern Honey. The next time I was in New York City in 2013 for a baking competition, I tried all of their cookies and decided to replicate all of them. You can find all of my Levain Bakery copycat recipes below.
I received word that Levain Bakery has come out with a brand new cookie — the ROCKY ROAD COOKIE. You better believe I was going to try it and create a recipe for all of you! It is straight up cookie perfection and after I had a bunch of recipe testers over to try the cookies, my son-in-law, Conner, declared it the best cookie he has ever tried in his entire life. It is now my husband’s number one most requested and most loved cookie recipe.
These are THE BEST ROCKY ROAD CHOCOLATE CHIP MARSHMALLOW COOKIES!
Everyone went crazy for these Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies and I literally couldn’t wait to share the recipe with you! So…what ingredients are in these Rocky Road Cookies?
Rocky Road Cookie Ingredients:
- Butter
- Brown Sugar
- Sugar
- Eggs
- Vanilla
- Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
- Cake Flour
- All-Purpose Flour
- Cornstarch
- Baking Soda
- Salt
- Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
- Marshmallows
- Cashews (or Almonds)
Most Rocky Road recipes call for chocolate, marshmallows, and almonds. I love that Levain Bakery made these Rocky Road Cookies with Cashews instead.
Tips for making Levain Bakery Rocky Road Cookies:
- Start with Cold Butter, cut into small cubes. This may sound counterintuitive to what we have been taught about cookie baking. The key is to warm the butter just enough by mixing it for 4 minutes with the brown sugar and sugar. This will allow the butter and sugar to become creamy which creates a smooth texture. The cold butter helps the cookie to keep its shape while baking.
- Use High-Quality Cocoa Powder. This is the star ingredient so use a good quality unsweetened cocoa powder.
- Use a mix of Cake Flour and All-Purpose Flour. When I first set out to create a Levain Bakery Copycat Cookie Recipe, I wanted to get their cookie texture just right. The cake flour has a lower gluten content which helps to create a more tender, softer texture. If you don’t have cake flour, you can substitute all-purpose flour.
- Use Mini Marshmallows. One tip is that the marshmallows have a tendency to melt if the marshmallows are on the edge of the cookie dough. When you remove the Rocky Road Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies from the oven, you will need to take a small brownie spatula to press the edges towards the center of the cookie. This just shapes the rocky road cookie as it cools.
- Use Cashews or Almonds. At Levain Bakery in New York City, they use cashews in their Rocky Road Cookies so we wanted to do the same. I love how the cashews don’t overwhelm the cookie but give it a nice salty crunch to offset the sweetness of the marshmallows. Since Rocky Road is usually made with almonds, feel free to substitute almonds in the cookies.
- To make your cookies look extra GOURMET, roll them into balls and then place a few additional chocolate chips and marshmallows on the top of the cookies. Just gently press the chocolate and marshmallows into the top of the cookie so that when you remove the chocolate marshmallow cookies from the oven, you can see the chocolate and marshmallows.
- Bake at a High Heat. This is the signature of my Levain Bakery Cookie Recipes and is an important step. You want to crank up the heat which allows the cookies to basically keep from spreading. It holds them into place and allows the cookies to get a nice, crispy edge and a gooey center.
- Let your Chocolate Rocky Road Cookies REST. These cookies need time to set up. Allow at least 10-15 minutes to set up on the cookie sheet before removing them.
Popular Levain Bakery Cookie Recipes:
LEVAIN BAKERY CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
LEVAIN BAKERY DARK CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
LEVAIN BAKERY CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER CHIP COOKIES
LEVAIN BAKERY OATMEAL RAISIN COOKIES
Cookie Baking Tools:
Pin this now to find it later
Pin It
Levain Bakery Rocky Road Cookies
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 cup Cold Butter (cut into cubes)
- 1 cup Brown Sugar
- 1/2 cup Sugar
- 2 large Eggs
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 1/2 cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
- 1 cup Cake Flour *
- 1 1/2 cups All-Purpose Flour
- 1 teaspoon Cornstarch
- 3/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1/2 teaspoon Salt
- 1 3/4 cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
- 2 cups Mini Marshmallows
- 3/4 cup Cashews (roughly chopped)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 410 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter, brown sugar, and sugar and mix for at least 4 minutes, or until light and creamy.
- Add eggs and vanilla and mix for 1 minute longer.
- Fold in cocoa powder, cake flour, all-purpose flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. Add chocolate chips, marshmallows, and cashews.
- Roll into 5 to 6-ounce large balls. Place on parchment paper lined baking sheet. I suggest using a light-colored baking sheet.
- To make them look extra gourmet...place a few chocolate chips and marshmallows on the tops of the cookies and lightly press into the top.
- Bake for 9-11 minutes. When you remove the cookies from the oven, one tip is that the marshmallows have a tendency to melt if the marshmallows are on the edge of the cookie dough. When you remove the cookies from the oven, you will need to take a small brownie spatula to press the edges towards the center of the cookie. This helps to shape the rocky road cookie as it cools.
- Let the cookies rest for 15 minutes to allow them time to set-up before removing from the baking sheet.
Notes
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
brain chemistry altering
Thank you so much for making these cookies, Morgan!
These are great!
One question I used small marshmallows, but they just seemed to dissolve into the cookie, still taste great. How can I fix this so marshmallow is visible?
Also I made 2.5 oz size for smaller cookie.
How long did you bake the smaller cookies for? I want small cookies but don’t want to risk over baking.
Hi Jean! I would recommend pressing some mini marshmallows on the top of the balls after rolling them. I hope that helps!
Fabulous idea making one of my favorite ice cream flavors into a cookie. However, making these cookies did not work for me. Maybe it’s our high altitude, but in cookie form they spread too much. So after my first failed batch, I spread the rest of the cookie dough into a well greased 9×13 pan and baked them at 350 for about 30 minutes and made cookie bars. This method worked like a charm! I prefer almonds in my Rocky road, so I used those instead of the cashews.
You should 100% make these and I will 100% be making them again – they’re DECADENT, very good cookies! They were a hit at home and work! I don’t like marshmallows in cookies and one of the people I was making them for is allergic to nuts, so I replaced the marshmallows and nuts with 1.75 cups white chocolate chips and 1 cup chopped pretzels, respectively. Those substitutions made it too chocolatey with not enough salty crunch, so next time I’ll do 1.25 cups each kind of chocolate and 2 cups chopped pretzels. Only did 2oz balls because I cannot fathom eating a 6oz cookie (but I do understand this is a bakery copycat recipe and that’s the size that a lot of bakeries make them). Took a couple batches to get the timing right but they were perfect after 400F for 9 minutes, then resting 2 minutes on the sheet before moving to cooling rack. I did scoop and level for the flour, I have a non-convection oven that I think runs 15-25F cool, and I doubled the vanilla extract. No cake flour so subbed AP flour (remove 2T, then replace with 2T of cornstarch in addition to the 1t in the recipe as another commenter suggested), worked awesome for me. Got really tough to mix them after adding dry ingredients, but they turned out REALLY GOOD regardless. Inside texture is almost like a brownie. Lots of substitutions (for mix-ins) but I kept the bulk of the dough recipe the same and kept the same proportion of mix-ins. I think there are probably a lot of ways you can go with the mix-ins and the base dough recipe will hold up and taste really good.
Hey Katie! I’m interested in trying your method of downsizing the cookie to 2oz. How many cookies did your batch yield and approximately how big did each cookie turn out? Thank you in advance for your response!
Hi! Each cookie was a little bit bigger than a regular size mason jar ring. I’m having trouble remembering how many cookies it yielded – my memory says I did a little over four batches (8 cookies per batch so that would be a little over 32 cookies), but the original recipe yields 8 cookies, so I should’ve only had 24. My theory is that I’m either remembering it super wrong, the substitutions managed to increase it somehow, or my scale is measuring high (which seems very unlikely to me but it is possible). Either way, I had to smoosh the cookies down a little bit from the balls so they were more like a couple inch thick disks, otherwise they didn’t spread enough. I found that baking them for 7-8 minutes wasn’t long enough because they were too underdone, but 9 wasn’t quite there either (they didn’t want to hold together for transfer over to the cooling rack), so I let them sit for 5 minutes on the sheet initially and that led to overdone cookies. 2 minutes was the sweet spot. I feel like the pretzels got a little soft after a day or so but I did buy store brand pretzels (maybe name brand would hold up better, or maybe they need to be stale?) and they were still really good. Hope this helps!
Thanks for your response and the extra details of your process! I really appreciate it! I’m more of a cake baker and I’m just delving into experimenting with cookies so really detailed comments like yours are super helpful when I find new recipes 🙂
Will they work if I make them smaller? They do look delish
I love your recipes and have made many.
Elaine
Thank you! Is there a way to get the recipe in metric?
Thank you for your delicious Rocky Road Cookie Recipe! I did not have any cake flour with which to make these for Chocolate Chip Cookie Day today! After doing a little research, I measured out 1 cup AP flour, subtracted 2 TBSP of the measured flour, and replaced it with 2 TBSP cornstarch as recommended to make “cake flour.” I also added the 1 tsp cornstarch as the recipe directs. The cookie texture was lovely. Additionally, I used Dutch process cocoa powder, left out the nuts (family allergies) and added dried cherries along with the chocolate chips and mini marshmallows. Result: Declared delicious by all “testers!” Thank you again!
That is so great, I love the addition of dried cherries! I am so glad you and your family loved them.