These Levain Bakery-Inspired Fruity Pebble Cookies are seriously DIVINE! For the true cereal lovers, this one’s for you!
Oh boy, have I done it again! As a self-proclaimed cereal aficionado, these may be one of my greatest masterpieces yet. And in one of my cookbooks I wrote an entire chapter dedicated to cereal, so this is saying a lot! (Two in One Desserts, if you’re so inclined to check out the book!)
Fruity Pebbles happens to be one of my favorite cereals ever, and I love coming up with inventive ways to use it in dessert recipes. This is a genius way to use it because you get all that flavor in a huge 6-oz gooey cookie. These cookies are seriously mind-blowing!
Levain Bakery is a famed NYC hot spot known for their giant cookies. However, if you can’t make it to NYC and don’t want to wait in their sometimes hours-long line, you can also purchase them online… for a hefty fee. Now, with my recipes we can make them at home – fresh cookies at the drop of a hat? Yes please! After making Levain’s signature 4 flavors, I decided to put my spin on their colossal cookies and make my own versions.
There are a few key components to making Levain cookies at home, and those are…
- Cornstarch: Cornstarch is one of my secret ingredients for soft and tender cookies! It gives such a light texture.
- Cake flour: Cake flour is used in Levain’s recipe to lighten things up and bring a fluffier texture. If all all-purpose flour were to be used in these cookies due to their size, the cookies would turn out super dense and more scone-like. Cake flour literally lightens things up and gives it a more tender crumb.
- Brief chill-time: These cookies chill for about 30 minutes to help maintain structure when baking. Since we’re only baking one sheet of cookies at a time, keep the remaining dough refrigerated.
- Extra mix-ins: Don’t be alarmed by the sheer amount of mix-ins in this recipe! The high quantity is needed in order to maintain the structure of the cookie. If less mix-ins were to be used, the cookie may spread too much or fall apart.
And for optimal baking results, follow these sure-fire tips:
- Shape: I like to shape these cookie dough balls rough and loose. Normally for cookies we’d use a cookie dough scoop which yields smooth, compacted balls of dough – but not for these! For this recipe, I like a craggy, rougher exterior and a looser pack which gives better texture. For accuracy, I like measuring out 6 ounces of dough using a digital cooking scale.
- Size: These cookies are quite colossal at a whopping 6 ounces apiece, per Levain’s standards, so I recommend only baking 4 cookies at a time on a baking sheet. For optimal results, stagger the cookie dough balls 3″ apart from one another, four dough balls per sheet. This helps bake them more consistently and prevents spreading and creating a giant cookie.
- Do not over-bake!: The best part of a Levain-style cookie is the gooey factor – slightly underdone in the centers and crisp on the outside. This is achieved by slightly underbaking the cookies. We’ll be baking these in the timeframe of 10-13 minutes. Everyone’s ovens are different, so I recommend test baking a single cookie to gauge how long your optimal time range is. (Mine was 12 minutes for this particular cookie). Remember, we’re only baking 1 sheet of cookies at a time in the center rack, so keep that in mind, and do remember that the cookies will continue to set up as they cool after baking.
- One at a time: Remember, the cookies are baked one sheet at a time in the center rack of the oven.
Fruity Pebble Cookies are fruity, fun, and SO delicious! A must make!
Levain Bakery-Inspired Fruity Pebble Cookies
Equipment
- Digital kitchen scale
Ingredients
- 1 cup COLD unsalted butter, cut into cubes
- 1½ cups granulated white sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 tsp cornstarch
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1½ cups cake flour
- 1¾ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups Fruity Pebbles cereal crumbs (finely ground)
- 2 cups Fruity Pebbles with Marshmallows cereal (can substitute with regular Fruity Pebbles)
- 2 cups white chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 410° degrees F.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter and granulated sugar with the paddle attachment on low speed for 30 seconds. Increase speed to medium and continue beating for another 30 seconds. Lastly, increase speed once more to medium-high speed and continue beating for 30 more seconds. Mixture should be light and fluffy.
- Beat in the eggs, one at a time, followed by the vanilla extract. Add in the cornstarch, baking soda, salt, cake flour, and all-purpose flour and mix on low speed until just combined. Add in the Fruity Pebble crumbs and mix well. Lastly, stir in the Fruity Pebbles with Marshmallows cereal and white chocolate chips by hand so as not to break the cereal or marshmallow pieces. Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using a digital cooking scale for accuracy, measure out a roughly shaped and loosely packed 6-ounce ball of dough. I like to measure my dough balls kind of taller as well. You don't want the dough balls to be too tight or compacted; a looser, rougher pack is perfect. Place 4 to a baking sheet in a staggered pattern about 3" apart.
- Bake for 10-13 minutes in the center rack of the oven, one sheet at a time. Bake until light golden brown, cookies appear set and are dull in color and texture. Do not over-bake. A good tip to gauge your proper baking time is to bake off one cookie at a time to see when your ideal baking time is. Cookies will still be significantly underdone in the center; remember, as they cool on the baking sheets they will continue to set up. Cookies will be fragile as they cool, so allow them to sit undisturbed for at least 30 minutes before cutting or serving. Keep any remaining dough refrigerated while other cookies bake.
Notes
These cookies are seriously one of my new favorites! My neighbors went wild for them!
Have a super sweet day!
xo, Hayley
More Fruity Pebbles this way…
Fruity Pebble Blondies
Fruity Pebbles No-Bake Cheesecake
Kristen says
Question! For the 2 cups of Fruity Pebbles crumbs, is that measured before or after crushing them? Like, 2 cups of fruity pebbles crushed down to a smaller amount, or 2 cups worth of fruity pebbles crumbs?
thedomesticrebel says
Hi Kristen, good question and I’ll amend the recipe to reflect, but it is 2 cups already crushed Pebbles cereal!
york :) says
just made these, and i LOVE them!! i did a few things slightly different from how the recipe recommended though! since i didn’t have any vanilla extract but did have raspberry extract, i used that instead! and, instead of making giant cookies, like the bakery that inspired this recipe, i instead made abt 2 inch dough balls and baked them for 7 minutes! came out beautifully, and a super easy recipe to follow!! thanks so much!! one of my new fav websites<3
Hazel says
After seeing how colossal the first one was, I decided to make them just under 1 ounce ( about the size of a lime) and baked 8 minutes at 410. They were perfect! I kept the dough in the fridge for 5 days because I didn’t have enough white chocolate chips and kept forgetting at the store. After 5 days, the dough was hard and crumbled a bit but l left it out for 20 minutes then hand mixed the final cereal with marshmallows and chips. Pressed together and baked. Turned out amazing!
clw says
Would love to have this in metric measurements as well. I halved the recipe and converted to metric so I could weigh the cake and all purpose flours. The dough was very dry and hard to get the mix-ins to stick. I refrigerated and hoped for the best. The test cookie was very brown on top already at 10 minutes. I think it may be related to substituting cascadian farms fruit krispies for a slightly healthier cereal than fruity pebbles. But the cookie didn’t stick together at all as shown in the photos of this recipe. It was still very gooey inside, and we enjoyed the flavor. Would love to have more photos, as I was pretty sure my dough was not right but had no comparison. Thanks for sharing this. I learned how to cube butter lol.