A little twist on a classic recipe. With the addition of brown butter and sea salt this cookie will become a favorite in your house as well.Â
Who doesn’t like a good chocolate chip cookie? They are pretty much perfect for everything. One of my all time favorites after a couple of days is to turn them into ice cream sandwiches. Right out of the oven these cookies are fantastic. These also happen to be some of the things I use to bribe my friends.Â
In this recipe
This recipe uses a higher ratio of brown sugar to granulated white sugar, along with sea salt, and brown butter. You will find that these cookies will be softer than other chocolate chip cookies.Â
Brown butter: This will add a nutty flavor to your cookies. It will also add a depth of flavor to them that you wouldn’t find using regular butter.Â
Brown sugar: With the higher amount of brown sugar there will caramel notes throughout the whole cookie. This flavor will continue to intensify when you get to the edges as the sugar will caramelize further.Â
Salt:Â By increasing the salt it will tone down the sweetness of the cookie just a little as well as enhance the other flavors within the cookie.Â
Brown butter...yes please!
This part is the tricky part of this recipe. When you heat up your butter on the stove once it is melted it will start to foam. Don’t worry about that just keep stirring and the foam will start to disappear. As the butter continues to cook you will see it boil. The fat part of the butter will not change color. The parts that you are browning are the milk solids. Once you start seeing little brown bits at the bottom keep stirring. Take the butter off of the heat when you see the solids turn a rich brown color.
You might notice that the cookie dough is a bit runny and might be closer to cookie soup. That is due to adding melted butter to the mixture instead of softened butter. This is ok as it will not impact the texture of the cookies at all.Â
Mix it up!
If you want to play around with some additional flavors or techniques check this out:
- Add some caramel chips to the mix by taking out the same amount of chocolate to pump up the caramel flavor.Â
- Sprinkle some maldon sea salt on the cookies once they have left the oven to punch up the flavor a bit.Â
- Substitute the chocolate chips for butterscotch chips.
- Add an ounce of rum, whiskey, or bourbon to the batter. Put the dough in the fridge for an hour or so to let it firm up before scooping with the additional liquid.
- To make a cookie pie with this just decrease the oven temperature by 25 degrees or a gas mark to bake for longer in a cast iron skillet.
- Do all of the above at once!
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Equipment
- Stand/Hand mixer
- Baking sheets
- Parchment paper/Silicone mat
- 1 tbsp cookie scoop
- Cooling rack
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1¼ tsp salt
- ¾ tsp baking soda
- 2 sticks butter
- ¾ cup sugar
- 1 cup brown sugar packed
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- 12 oz bittersweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F, and line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.
- In a small bowl whisk the flour, salt, and baking soda together.
- In a small pan melt butter and cook until the milk solids have started to brown. They will get darker than you expect so let it get to a rich golden brown color. Set aside and let it cool.
- In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or in a large bowl using a hand mixer, beat the sugars and browned butter together on medium speed until smooth.
- Add the eggs 1 at a time and beat them for 1 minute before adding the next.
- Add the vanilla and reduce the speed to low.
- In two parts add the dry ingredients mixing only they are incorporated.
- Add the chocolate chips and mix until just incorporated.
- Using the cookie scoop, drop dough onto baking sheets about 2 inches apart.
- Bake the sheets one at a time for 10-12 min or until the cookies are golden brown. If you want to cook 2 sheets at once put two racks as close together in the oven and rotate the sheets halfway between cooking.
- They might still be a little soft in the middle but that is ok. Let them sit on the pan for a min or so before using a spatula to transfer to a cooling rack. Repeat with the rest of the dough once the sheets have cooled.
Notes
- The dough can be stored in the refrigerator for 3 days or in freezer for up to 2 months.Â
- If you are going to store in the freezer portion into balls first and then freeze. This will make the cookies much easier to cook when ready.Â
- Portioning the dough into balls is the best for when you don't want to make the whole batch at once. Just freeze the rest and whenever you are craving a couple of freshly baked cookies just pop a couple out of the freezer and onto a small baking sheet. Just add a few additional minutes to your baking if you bake them from frozen.Â
Browning the butter for these cookies gave them an extra special flavor that all of my friends enjoyed. I will be making these again soon.