Comments on: Brown Butter Cookies

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:59:38 +0000

Choose WISELY!

By: Brendan

Brendan — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:54:49 +0000

hmmm… it would spice up the office christmas party watching peoples faces melt off when they chose the fancier more expensive looking cookies. jus sayin

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 21 May 2010 10:07:56 +0000

I definitely wouldn't use margarine for these… as far as I know you can't really brown margarine.

By: Kir

Kir — Thu, 20 May 2010 22:15:36 +0000

I'm a baker's daughter and crave these rich cookies. However, I live overseas and cannot get real butter. I know everything tastes better with butter, but will margarine work alright?

By: From the Ashes of Friday’s Baking Disasters: Strawberry Rhubarb Jam | ModernDomestic

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:40:42 +0000

[...] I was making (sometimes I really hate my oven), and my brown butter cookies melted. Like, I misread Macheesmo’s recipe and added way more butter than I needed to, so they literally melted. Someone really needs [...]

By: Barbra

Barbra — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:24:32 +0000

"Really the only way you can mess this up is to overcook it and turn your brown butter black."

Another way to mess it up: using a cheapo plastic spoon to stir the butter!

By: Tara

Tara — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:28:16 +0000

So I just made a few more with chilled dough, and also reduced the cooking time, and the texture is drastically different. This batch is smoother and melted in our mouths like you said. Specifically I went from 10 minutes down to about 8. Thanks again!

By: Tara

Tara — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:24:55 +0000

I did get distracted while mixing the butter and sugar together so maybe it warmed up too much, but my butter was cooled solid initially. Thanks for the help!

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:55:51 +0000

@ Tara. Oh man! What a bummer… I definitely wouldn't describe them as either grainy or oily… or gritty! Mine didn't have the texture of a soft sugar cookie though. But they were light and and kind of melted.

There's been a few other food bloggers that have posted this recipe and based on the comments, I guess maybe it isn't the most consistent recipe.. people seem to get a lot of different results… see:

http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/12/brown-butter-br…

If I had to guess at a possible cause it would be either that the butter/sugar wasn't creamed well together resulting in a grainy sugar thing and would also cause the butter to maybe be oily. Or if you didn't cool the butter enough it might not cream together well with the sugar… Or it's possible that they were sliced too thin or overbaked a bit… Maybe it's important to chill them before baking…

I'm going to remake these over the holidays and see if I can iron out some of your issues.

By: Tara

Tara — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:28:32 +0000

The texture of my cookies is terrible, and I'm not sure what happened. They're grainy and oily. Are they supposed to be gritty at all?

Things I may have messed up: I used dark brown sugar; I've never browned butter before – I stopped cooking it when it was a pumpkin color; I didn't strain the solids from the butter at all, was I supposed to? I rolled the dough into a cylinder and maybe sliced the cookies too thin? I baked these cookies right after making the dough without chilling it.

This was disappointing because they smelled so good that I wanted to eat my hand after making the dough.