Gooey on the Inside (West Village)

Six ounces of cookie, crisp at the edge

Everything here turns on one format: a six-ounce cookie with a crisp edge and a centre left deliberately soft. The recipe was worked out in a Chelsea kitchen through repeated trials and corrections before it became a shop, and the founder's account of it runs through Caribbean roots and Canadian winters rather than through pastry school. The result is a counter that treats a cookie as a full dessert rather than something to hand over with a coffee, and the West Village room is one of two Gooey on the Inside runs in New York, the other on Chrystie Street.

Chocolate, in quantity

The flavours are built around how much chocolate a cookie can carry. Birthday Cake uses imported French white chocolate chunks, birthday cake flavour and coloured sprinkles; The Bueno Bueno is filled with hazelnut cream and studded with milk chocolate, white chocolate and Kinder Bueno pieces; Chocolate Chip Chunk layers dark and milk chocolate chips with dark chocolate chunks in a golden dough. From there the range widens without leaving the formula: S'mores brings French milk chocolate, dark chocolate and marshmallows into a dark chocolate cookie, Almond Raspberry Rose sets white chocolate against tart raspberry, toasted almonds and rose, and Peach Biscoff Cheesecake folds cheesecake, peach and Biscoff crumble together. Warm jar desserts and croissant-based builds sit beside the cookies, and the shop also ships and delivers.

Order the Chocolate Chip Chunk, then the Croissandwich

Start with Chocolate Chip Chunk, the plainest version of the house idea and the fastest way to judge whether the texture claim holds. Birthday Cake is the one to take if you want the sweeter, more theatrical end, and The Bueno Bueno is the richest of the three. The Croissandwich pushes the format as far as it goes, packing warm cookie dough, ganache and vanilla ice cream inside a warm flaky croissant, and comes in Chocolate Chip Chunk, Birthday Cake and S'mores versions. There is also a tart built on a croissant base with ganache and a cookie top, made in Bueno Bueno and Chocolate Chip Chunk. Order one cookie warm and take a second home; they are large enough that two people can share and still feel it.