A Definitive Guide To London’s Best Cookies

Let’s hear it for the sugared choc chip circle of life. No matter how many birthday cakes pass and mille-feuille cross our plates, we’re still always down for milk’s sidekick. And if you’re going to cookie, you want to cookie right.

So, how did we find London’s best cookies? We tried over 40 from bakeries and cafes across the city, then brought our favourites to a blind taste test that will go down in history as The Great Sugar Crash Of ‘24. You’ll find the best of the best—thick, thin, buttery, doughy, lightly sprinkled with sea salt—in this guide.

A word of warning: cookie flavours change like the seasons, so we can’t promise that all of the toppings and flavours featured in this guide will be available on the day you go. May the cookie odds be ever in your favour.

THE COOKIES

Cookie of choice: anzac

The sweet treat world is full of sickos. No dough is safe from birthday cake flavouring and no baked good is above having an entire Kinder Bueno shoved into it. So it’s nice to find simple and outstanding cookies like the ones at Juliet’s Quality Foods in Tooting. Not too fat, but not too thin either, these cookies have the perfect equilibrium of crust and soft chew. The anzac is our favourite. It’s a cookie with notions of health (oats) but loaded with butter, coconut, and golden syrup. The dark chocolate with gooey marshmallow is also a not-too-sweet masterclass.

Cookie of choice: chocolate and banana

Size isn’t everything, but sometimes it helps. Even the Cookie Monster would approve of N5 Kitchen’s palm-width, half-inch-thick sweet treats. Flavours change daily at the Finsbury Park cafe. Count on whatever it is to have great chew and not be overly sweet, though. If it’s on, get the banana and chocolate.

Cookie of choice: dark chocolate and hazelnut

Beaten By A Whisker’s soft, gooey cookie is one that will appeal to chewy-texture people. There’s a little bit of a crust, but really it’s barely there, and only just holding in the seriously rich dark chocolate and pieces of savoury hazelnuts that are in each bite. This Walthamstow bakery’s cookie also had some of the best salt levels—enough to balance the chocolate, but doesn’t make you feel like a snail under attack.

Cookie of choice: dark chocolate and miso (or the elusive banoffee)

The cookies served at London Fields’ Running Late Coffee, courtesy of Netil Market stall Mamma G Cookies, are handmade by an investment banker who quit his day job to make cookies full time. Outside of offering a promising plot twist for the narrative arc of Industry, we are here to say that this coffee shop's cookies are the antithesis of mortgage chat. They’re very sweet and chunky, and are destined for milk-dipping and profound whispers about banoffee. If you’re more of a grown-up flavours enthusiast, the subtle saltiness of the dark chocolate and miso cookie will hit the spot. They’re all great paired with Running Late’s brews.

Cookie of choice: chocolate chip

If Layla was a person, they’d be the effortlessly attractive one that strangers post on TikTok with the caption “London, do your thing”. But you won’t need to ask Gen Z where to find London’s chicest cookie because we’ve found it for you. A thick, perfectly round disk, with some height to it without going full Peak District, it’s of the chewy, doughy variety, with unevenly spread shards of dark chocolate throughout, and a sprinkling of sea salt flakes on top. If you’re into cookie dough, you’ll love the one from this Notting Hill bakery.

Cookie of choice: double chocolate

In the mornings, Toad’s cocoa-rich vegan cookies are a little crispy and crunchy. But keep them in your bag until that 3pm dip hits or swing by the Peckham bakery after lunch, and the middle will have softened to a gorgeous fudgy texture. Fine-flaked sea salt covers the top so each bite is salty-sweet.

Cookie of choice: banana and dark chocolate

If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? And if a cookie has the hench dough presence of a rock cake, is it still a cookie? We’ll leave that and life’s other big questions to Nietzsche and instead just say, we like this chunky banana creation from Crème, a boutique-esque Soho cookie shop. Even if the cookie’s texture does fall within the cake spectrum. One for anyone whose primary motive for baking cookies is licking the dough from a spoon.

Cookie of choice: dark chocolate rye

Warning: you may have a serious case of chocolate teeth after a bite of this Battersea cafe’s cookie. This one is for the triple chocolate lovers. It’s a cocoa-rich cookie that tastes like a fudgy brownie-cookie hybrid, with a lovely balance of sweetness and bitterness from the dark chocolate and salt flakes sprinkled on top. It’s great with coffee, which is perfect because we’re big fans of the brews at this spot.

8.1

Bake Street

$$$$Perfect For:BrunchLunchHalal

Cookie of choice: crème brûlée

Snapping one of Bake Street’s crème brûlée cookies in half is just as satisfying as eating it. The burnished exterior mimics its crème brûlée namesake, making for a pleasing ASMR crack and super sugary bite. Inside, it's creamy and gooey. The perfect post-burger dessert at this Hackney brunch spot. Just arrive early before they sell out.