Located at the base of Thomas Keller’s expansive Bouchon Bistro in Beverly Hills, Bouchon Bakery may be small, but they’re able to generate big flavor behind the counter. The Nutter Butter is a deluxe play on a popular sandwich, featuring a pair of peanut butter cookies cradling a rich blend of Italian buttercream and still more peanut butter.

Enjoying a Cake Monkey cookie is kind of like chomping down on a childhood memory. Chef Elizabeth Belkind and business partner Lisa J. Olin specialize in elevated versions of retro classics. Cake Monkey’s Nuff Said cookie leads your palate down a Rocky road with a chewy mix of dark chocolate, sea salt, marshmallow and crushed pecans.

Pastry chef Naomi Shim helps fuel Tyler King’s growing specialty coffee chain from the kitchen of Coffee Commissary’s Burbank branch. Her German chocolate cookie riffs on German chocolate cake - named for 19th Century baker Sam German, not the nation. In Shim’s hands, the cookies are soft with crisp edges, pockets of molten dark chocolate, coconut strands and crushed pecans.

Chef Michelle Wilton and husband Corey channel the four seasons at Four Café locations in Eagle Rock and near LACMA. Her buttery chocolate chip cookie with bittersweet chocolate and a hit of Maldon sea salt is undoubtedly one of the city’s best chocolate cookies.

Maral Sarkhoshian and her baker husband, Hovsep, specialize in baklava, but don’t sleep on their snail-shaped sesame cookies. These tahini-centric spirals wrap layers of pastry with terrific sesame filling. The cookies are caramelized at the base, and flakier at the top.

Jamie Cantor worked at The French Laundry before launching a company and Culver City shop with cookies as her primary focus. Judicious discs include Platine’s signature cookie, a chewy mélange of oats, Zante currants, granola, chocolate chips and walnuts. NOTE: the retail bakery is closed for walk in traffic, email office@platinecookies.com to place an order for pickup.

Glendale native Na Young Ma quickly turned her spare Atwater Village bakery into a pastry destination. She crafts craggy oatmeal currant cookies using oats, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and sweet tart dried currants, finishing matters with a hit of salt.

People have learned that Margarita Manzke is a force of nature in the Republique bakery. Each day, she fills the countertop with an array of tantalizing items. Her selection includes the chewy cookie, a molten brownie-like dark chocolate cookie baked with almond flour, studded with walnuts and sporting a thin crust.

Sharon Wang, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone and the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, delivers masterful Asian inspired creations to area coffeehouses, including Grounded in Hollywood, and both Blacktop and Stumptown in the Downtown Arts District. Her miso butterscotch cookie is supple and savory, studded with sweet white chocolate chips.

This multifaceted restaurant and bakery from Paul Hibler and the American Gonzo Food Corp brought breeziness to a stretch of Venice that isn’t even on the beach. Pastry chef Lincoln Carson, who was Michael Mina’s dessert maven for years, fills the counter daily with delicious temptations, including chocolate walnut cookies by the register that deliver crisp edges, chocolate pockets, and chunks of earthy walnuts. What a great impulse buy.

Susan Sarich has built a bakery empire based by selling top-flight childhood favorites. The whoopie pie features two thick, chewy, buttery chocolate cookies kissed with cocoa, sandwiched with rich vanilla buttercream. They differ from traditional New England style whoopie pies, which typically have a sticky muffin top-type texture. Susie’s whoopie is more like an oversized Oreo, only not so firm.

Leslie Danelian and husband Rick Berge preside over this multi-faceted Sherman Oaks café. Their showcase oatmeal blueberry chocolate cookie combines melting, tile-shaped chocolates with sweet-tart dried blueberries and of course plenty of sweet butter to make this cookie nice and chewy.

Karen Hatfield and chef-husband Quinn have created an industrial chic culinary wonderland amidst La Brea’s design and furniture shops. One of the most impressive offerings on the pastry counter is a chocolate chip rye cookie crafted with earthy rye flour, contributing to a crisp crust that provides refuge to pockets of molten chocolate.

Valerie Gordon and Stan Weightman became popular by serving their chocolates and pastries at farmers markets, and the couple now has two sit-down locations, at Grand Central Market and in Echo Park. Their most popular cookie is undoubtedly the Durango cookie, a crispy disc with nuanced ingredients in every bite: milk chocolate, roasted almonds, cocoa nibs, and the finishing touch, a dusting of Durango hickory smoked salt.