New York Cookies in Saigon: The Miso Cornflake Secret

If you want thick, heavy, molten-center New York-style cookies in Saigon, we bake them fresh all day at our bakery in District 3.

We use strictly real butter and Puratos chocolate. Our signature is the Miso-Marshmallow-Cornflake cookie, and the case also carries Choco-Walnut, Double Dark Chocolate, Red Velvet, Ube Kaya, Rocky Road and Matcha White Chocolate. You can grab one warm from our oven in Bàn Cờ Ward, or order a full box for delivery anywhere in Ho Chi Minh City via GrabFood or ShopeeFood. The recipe for our choco-walnut cookie is further down this page.

Killing the Thin Biscuit

Forget the thin, snappy biscuit you grew up with. That is not what we do here.

A proper New York-style cookie is aggressive. Ours weigh 120 grams of heavy dough each. The entire goal is to bake the outside just enough so it sets into a stable crust, while the center stays completely molten and gooey. When you break it in half, the chocolate should drag and stretch.

That weight is not showmanship. Below about 100 grams there is not enough mass for the middle to stay soft while the edge sets, and you end up with a cookie that is uniformly cooked, which is a different and lesser thing.

We didn’t invent this style. We are heavily inspired by Levain Bakery in New York. But we realized that trying to find a cookie with that level of density and real butter in Saigon was almost impossible.

So we built our own.

The Ingredients

We made a rule on day one: no shortcuts.

Butter brings flavor and tenderness. Use margarine and your cookie turns waxy, leaving a cheap film in your mouth. We use a generous amount of real butter.

For the chocolate, we refuse to use industrial compound “chocolate buttons” that stay hard and taste flat. We use real Puratos chocolate because it actually melts in the oven, giving you that true molten hit when you bite into the center.

In the choco-walnut we chop it instead of using chips, dark and milk together. A chocolate chip is engineered to hold its shape in the oven. Chopping gives shards and dust instead of uniform pellets, so some pieces melt into seams through the dough and some stay as pockets. The dark carries the flavour and the milk keeps it from turning bitter against the walnut.

The walnuts are toasted first. An untoasted walnut is soft and slightly tannic and disappears into the dough. Toasting dries it out, brings the oils up, and gives it a dark, faintly bitter edge that stands against an otherwise sweet cookie, plus texture in a cookie that is otherwise entirely soft.

And finally, the trick that makes a New York cookie work: we ball the dough and freeze it. We mix large batches through the week, freeze the balls solid, and bake them fresh from frozen all day long. Baking straight from frozen keeps them tall and gooey instead of spreading flat, and it means we never bake at 6 AM and let them sit. If you walk into our shop at 3 PM, there is a good chance the cookie you are eating came out of the oven minutes ago.

The Sleepless Miso Invention

Our recipe developer, Thu, is obsessed with texture. Our Miso-Marshmallow-Cornflake cookie, a customer favorite, came from a sleepless night of testing.

She wanted to build something with marshmallows, but a soft cookie with soft marshmallows needs an anchor. It needs crunch. So she folded in toasted cornflakes. But then the cookie tipped into being too sweet. To drag it back, she added miso paste.

The saltiness of the miso cuts violently through the sugar, while the cornflakes provide a brutal crunch against the soft, melting marshmallow. It sounds like a dare, but it’s become one of our favorite things we make.

The Rest of the Cookie Case

Every cookie in the case is the same 120-gram, baked-from-frozen New York style:

• Choco-Walnut: the classic, with chopped dark and milk chocolate and toasted walnuts. The recipe is below.
• Double Dark Chocolate: a dark cocoa dough loaded with dark chocolate chunks.
• Red Velvet: soft red velvet studded with white chocolate chunks.
• Ube Kaya: purple ube dough and white chocolate, with house-made coconut kaya spooned into the centre.
• Rocky Road: toasted cashews, chocolate and marshmallow.
• Matcha White Chocolate: a green tea dough with white chocolate chunks.

A box of three is the easy way to settle which one you like best. The same all-day, real-butter approach goes into our millionaire’s shortbread and our lamingtons, if you want to taste the rest of what comes out of the oven. Browse the full cookie range.

Our Choco-Walnut Cookie Recipe

This is the formula we actually use, scaled down for a home kitchen. It makes about 20 large cookies at 120 grams each, so halve it if that is too much dough for your freezer.

Ingredients

• 226 g real butter, room temperature
• 200 g brown sugar
• 200 g white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 570 g all-purpose flour
• 14 g baking powder
• 8 g baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 400 g dark chocolate, chopped
• 200 g milk chocolate, chopped
• 320 g walnuts, toasted and chopped

A stand mixer with the paddle attachment, a digital scale, and freezer space for the balls make this repeat the same way twice.

Method

1. Bring the butter to about 18 to 20°C, pliable but not greasy. Cream it with both sugars on medium speed for four to five minutes, scraping the bowl twice, until pale and nearly doubled in volume. Under-creamed, the cookie bakes dense. Over-creamed, it spreads thin.
2. Add the eggs one at a time on low speed with the vanilla, letting each one fully incorporate before the next goes in. The batter should stay glossy. If it looks split, the butter was too cold; warm the bowl briefly and keep going.
3. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. Add it all at once and mix on the lowest speed only until the flour disappears, twenty to thirty seconds. Every extra turn toughens the crumb, so finish by hand if you are unsure.
4. Fold in the dark chocolate, milk chocolate and toasted walnuts on the lowest speed or by hand, just enough to distribute them evenly.
5. Portion the dough into 120-gram balls on the scale and freeze them solid. A frozen ball holds its shape while the outside sets in the oven, which is what lets the cookie bake tall instead of spreading into a flat disc.
6. Bake straight from frozen at 170°C in a high-convection oven for about sixteen minutes, until the edges are set and the centre still looks underdone. Carry-over heat finishes the middle, so pull the tray a minute early rather than a minute late.
7. Rest the cookies on the tray for ten minutes before eating, while the chocolate is still soft.

This cookie is tuned for a high-convection oven that holds a steady 170°C with real air movement. A lot of kitchens here run a small countertop oven, and a frozen ball in weak, uneven heat bakes through instead of staying molten in the centre. If your first batch comes out thin or bakes all the way through, that is the oven and the practice, not a step you missed. Find your oven’s hottest, most even setting and try again.

What customers notice about the cookies

We’ll let our customers speak for themselves:

“Best cookies in HCMC. The rest of the pastries are super good too. The team is lovely.” Bertrand J., Google ★★★★★

“The ube cookie was unreal. Best cookies in Saigon.” Leonard L., Google ★★★★★

“The choco-walnut cookie is perfectly crunchy, soft, and moist. Super gooey.” Phero N., Google ★★★★★

If you want to taste what happens when New York density meets Saigon creativity, come find us in the alley. We’ll grab you one hot out of the oven.

Thu, Co-founder

About the author: Thu (Nguyễn Bùi Minh Thư) is Dulce de Saigon’s co-founder, who leads the company and develops our recipes. She’s self-taught. She learned to bake from Cupcake Jemma on YouTube before opening Dulce, and she invented the miso-marshmallow-cornflake cookie on the sleepless night described above. More at our story.

📍 How to get yours

We bake our cookies fresh all day at our bakery in District 3 (382/15 Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai, Bàn Cờ Ward). We’re open 8 AM to 9 PM.

If you need a box of warm cookies delivered to your office or home in HCMC:

• Direct Delivery: order.ipos.vn
• Apps: GrabFood | ShopeeFood
• Office and party boxes (48 hours’ notice): Message us directly on Zalo (0903 305 993) with your headcount and the pickup or delivery time, and we bake the batch for that day.

We box cookies after they cool, so the texture sets and they travel well. A cookie packed hot steams inside the box and loses its edge.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a New York-style cookie?

Thick, soft in the middle and gooey (ours are 120 grams of dough each), baked until the edges set while the centre is still half-molten. Made with real butter and real chocolate, and built to be eaten straight away, ideally still warm.

Where can I get a soft cookie in Ho Chi Minh City?

At Dulce de Saigon, 382/15 Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai, Bàn Cờ Ward, open daily 8 AM to 9 PM, or to order via order.ipos.vn, GrabFood and ShopeeFood.

Are your cookies made with real butter?

Yes, real butter. Baked fresh every day in small batches.

Do you use chocolate chips?

No. We use real chocolate, and in the choco-walnut we chop dark and milk chocolate together, because chips are formulated to hold their shape and cheap compound buttons barely melt at all.

Do the cookies contain nuts?

The choco-walnut has toasted walnuts and the rocky road has cashews, so neither is suitable for anyone with a nut allergy. Ask when you order.

Can I buy cookies by the box?

Yes, by the cookie, or a box to share and take home. Large or custom orders need 48 to 72 hours’ notice. Message us on Zalo at 0903 305 993.

Can I halve the choco-walnut recipe?

Yes. Every ingredient scales evenly; halving gives about 10 cookies. Keep the oven temperature and the freeze step the same either way.

What is your most unusual cookie?

The miso-marshmallow-cornflake cookie: salty, buttery, sweet and crunchy all at once. It’s our signature.