Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
These cookies are almost over the top, but not quite. Their texture and deep flavor is way better (in my opinion) than a normal chocolate chip cookie.
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Jump to RecipeAre you in desperate need of a raise, lover, friend, or just some general praise? These cookies, my friend, have the potential to get you all of those things. Ok. I can’t promise the raise, but ya never know!
Anybody can make a decent chocolate chip cookie right? The good news is that anybody can also make a better chocolate chip cookie because these little guys are better than the standard but still pretty straightforward to make.
There’s one trick and one secret ingredient that takes these cookies to the next level.
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Serves:
- Makes 24-30 cookies
- Prep Time:
- Total Time:
Helpful Equipment:
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These cookies are almost over the top, but not quite. Their texture and deep flavor is way better (in my opinion) than a normal chocolate chip cookie.
Ingredients
Instructions
1) Mix flour, salt, and baking soda in a small bowl and set aside.
2) In a medium pot, add butter over medium heat and cook until melted. Turn heat down to low.
3) Cook, and whisk occasionally, until milk fats seperate out and slightly burn on the bottom of the pan. Little brown specks will appear and it will smell very nutty. This should take 15-20 minutes.
4) Let brown butter cool for a few minutes then add sugars and stir to combine. Let cool for a few more minutes until warm.
5) Add sugar/butter mixture to a stand mixer bowl or a bowl with a hand mixer and cream together on medium speed until slightly fluffy and combined, about 5 minutes.
6) Add egg and yolk, vanilla, half and half, and lemon juice.
7) Next add flour in a few batches and stir on low speed until well incorporated. Don’t overmix though.
8) Stir in chocolate chips. Cover and store in the fridge for at least an hour, but you could store it for up to a week.
9) When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350. Add large tablespoons of dough to a parchment sheet lined baking sheet. Roll dough into balls.
10) Bake for 9-10 minutes. Preferably underbake these.
11) Cool for a minute or two preferably on a wire rack and eat as soon as possible!
The Secret Ingredient
I haven’t seen many cookies that are made with bread flour instead of all-purpose flour. In fact, the first time I saw this recipe I thought it was a mistake.
But trust me. It’s not a mistake. This is the stuff you want.
Bread flour has a slightly higher amount of gluten in it which is why it’s great for breads. It gives you that really chewy texture that you can’t reproduce with all-purpose flour. In fact, most bakeries use even a higher-gluten flour then bread flour which is pretty hard to find in stores.
Because of the bread flour, these cookies have a bit more chew to them then you’re probably used to. It makes for a fantastic texture.
Besides the flour, you’ll need some standard cookie stuff, including a lot of butter of course.
To start, mix your flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and set aside for later. You don’t want to have to be worried about that at the last minute.
Browning the butter
I’ve made brown butter sugar cookies before and these are a similar process. The flavor is really boosted in these though because of the brown sugar, extra vanilla, and chocolate obviously. These are much more decadent.
The butter process is the same though. If you’ve never browned butter before, don’t stress about it. It’s really simple.
Start by adding your butter to a medium pot over medium-low heat and let it melt. Once it starts frothing, turn the heat down to low and whisk the butter. As the butter cooks, the water will evaporate from the butter leaving only the oil and the milk solids. Eventually, the milk solids will separate out and start to brown which gives it the distinct brown color and also the delicious nutty flavor.
It’ll take about 15-20 minutes for the butter to brown. Just whisk it every minute or so to make sure that it’s heating evenly. There’s no need to lord over it though.
You know your done when it smells very fragrant and nutty and looks like this!
See those little brown specks at the bottom? Those are butter gold!
Let this cool for a minute and then add all your sugar to the brown butter. Stir it all together.
If we continued to heat this and melted all the sugar, you’d have a brown butter caramel sauce!
But we don’t want that. We want cookie dough, so it’s okay if your sugar and butter separate out some.
Let the butter/sugar mixture cool down before continuing since we are going to be adding eggs to them. You don’t want to cook the eggs!
Making the Dough
From here on out the process is the exact same as making any cookie dough. Add the butter/sugar mixture to a stand mixer or use a hand mixer (on medium) to cream the butter and sugar together. It should lighten up a bit and turn fluffy. My took about 4 minutes to get to the right point.
Then add your egg and egg yolk and continue to mix. Add the vanilla, half and half, and lemon juice, and eventually you’ll have a very smooth caramel colored mixture.
This is the stuff dream cookies are made of.
Turn the mixer to low and stir in the bread flour mixture in a few batches just until it’s combined.
Then add in all the chocolate chips and stir again until they are evenly distributed. Try not to over-mix the dough.
Chillin
This dough needs to chill before you use it. Wrap it up in plastic wrap and store it in your fridge for an hour or two before baking.
You could keep it in your fridge for a week like this without a problem.
Baking the cookies
When you’re ready to bake, roll the dough into heaping Tablespoon sized balls and add them to a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
These will not spread out like some cookies do. Instead they will puff up! So you don’t need as much space between each cookie. Just an inch or so should do the trick.
Bake them at 350 degrees for 9-10 minutes. Cookies are always better if they are slightly underbaked so I recommend pulling them out at 9 minutes.
Let them cool for a few minutes (move them to a rack if you have one handy), and then dig in!
These are best right out of the oven, but they were actually still very good a day later.
I didn’t have any left to try after that point. If they make it longer than 24 hours without being consumed, you probably did something wrong!
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Hello! My name is Nick Evans and I write and manage Macheesmo. I started Macheesmo 11 years ago when I was just learning my way around the kitchen. I love to cook and love everything food-related, but I have no formal training. These days I focus on fast, accessible recipes with the occasional “reach” recipe!
I’ve posted almost 2,000 recipes on Macheesmo. For each one, I do my best to give full explanations of what I did and tips on what I’d do differently next time. I’ll bring up the tricky parts and the easy parts.
I hope you can find something and cook something!
These look really good. I looked at your brown butter cookies, and they look good too. You should try this recipe someday, its similar but enough different to be worth trying at some point, and it's one of my favorites!
http://abreiden.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/brown_su…
yummy, yummy,yummy – my gran used to say: you get tummy ache from eating warm cookies. I suppose she just didn't want us to eat it all before she was finished baking ;-)
Hey, Glad you liked these. They're on my website, w/ a printable recipe. Would appreciate a link :) http://www.recipegirl.com/2009/08/17/browned-butt…
Post updated Lori. Sorry about that. I forgot that the recipe was on your site also and not just in 55 Knives.
I wish I could reach into my computer and grab it! The chocolate chips are just oozing out!!! What a great idea to brown the butter first. I'd add some nuts though.
And taking your idea a step further, I'd put the (chopped) nuts into the brown butter toward the end so you get the goodness of that toasting as well.
Any tips for those of us still on the free agent market, and who haven’t had opportunity to register for our stand and/or hand mixers?
Yep yep. As Kitty said below, a good old wooden spoon can get the job done ;)
When I bought 55 Knives awhile back, I immediately noticed this recipe and have been making them ever since. L.O.V.E. these cookies, my kids can't get enough of them!
Awesome Kim! Glad you like the cookies (courtesy of Lori) and 55 Knives!
I added browned butter to my cookies last weekend, but I didn’t have bread flour and so I just used the tollhouse recipe except I browned (and then resolidified) the butter. Even that made a real difference!
And Bill, people have been making cookies for a lot longer than every at-home baker has had a stand mixer. Use a wooden spoon.
Wow, I’ve never heard of lemon juice and half n half in a cookie recipe before. These remind me a bit of the infamous Cooks’ Illustrated ones, with the egg + egg yolk and brown butter. Those are amazingly good too.
Could I sub milk instead of half and half?
Sure Karie. It's a small amount so I don't think it would affect it to sub milk.
Oh, so sexy (sorry, brown butter just evokes that response in me)!!! My mouth is totally watering…that's my kinda cookie :)
Wow, I like the cookies. Do you think I would be able to convince my pastry chef that we need these on the banquet menu? I am going to do a test today. Ahem, Ahem. LOL
Good work Nick.
Mine flattened out.
Hmm… not sure why that wouuld happen… hopefully they were still good!
Did you refrigerate the dough before baking?
Oh. This is really a great tutorial. Well, actually I really do not know anything about cookies or baking but with this tutorial with all of these pictures I think I can be a one-time chef in my kitchen. lol. Thanks a lot for sharing. I will try this out and surprise my children with this little treat!
Nick you lovely man! You made my evening for me with this recipe… I made up a batch last night and happily gobbled down a few (okay, more then a few) with some tea on the deck with my hubby as the sun set; a perfect fall activity. I can't imagine these lasting more than another day, they're amazing! (And I should add that I had to sub lime juice for lemon since I was out and they still came out delish, a sign of a good recipe!).
I really want to make these, but I am from Australia and would like to know what 'half and half' is?
Hey Rebecca! It's an American thing I think that's half cream and half milk. It's such a small amount in this recipe that you could substitute either milk or cream with no problem I think ;)
mine needed closer to 12 minutes to bake (9 minutes and they were still wet) but they turned out very nicely! A little too sweet for our taste, but the people at work loved it.
I substituted Splenda in for the 1/4 cup of sugar and mine turned out great! Also you could try to use brown sugar Splenda and see if that cuts down on the sweetness. Other things you could try are cutting down on the chocolate chips or total substitute them out for dried cranberries or peanuts or whatever you like!
* totally…oops typo :)
Holy. Everyone that ate these asked if they had caramel in them. These are truly amazing, thanks for posting them!
I love the melted chocolate in the inside of the cookie! It looks like that it will burst some chocolates in your mouth. This is truly a mouth watering cookie. Thanks for the recipe.
Yummy! Those are truly tempting and indulging! I can't wait to eat cookies like those ones. I just hope that i bake it right! Thanks for the awesome recipe.
Interesting with the lemon juice as the acid will usually counteract the gluten formation…
Anyhoo, anything with browned butter is delic…will make tonight and test… Thanks for the recipe – great site btw, too.
Update: recipe made. Verdict: (the cookie dough was damn delish!). The cookie itself was pretty good. I personally don't prefer the bread flour. I think that it lends to a tougher cookie ("chewy"?). Taste? Phenomenal. Next time, no bread flour for me, but definitely sticking with brown butter!
;-)
I used to have a choco chip recipe that had my hometown clamoring for more! Time to try these. I may bring them to a friend who is house sitting as a way to say thanks.
Baked the cookies following the recipe and they turn out to be really good! I tend to throw away the cookie dough and only eat the chocolate chips but this cookie douhg was so delicious!!! The dough had so much complexity, love it! On the other hand, I love thick ccc with round edges and this did not made it for me. I think the bread flour was too tough for me. So, I will modify my so far “favorite ccc recipe” to add lemon juice and 1/2&1/2. Hopefully it will be a hit! Thanks for sharing I would never thought of lemon juice and 1/2&1/2.
These are AWESOME!! I made them for my new neighbor and also a batch for us. My husband said they are better than his grandmas…now that’s a compliment! Thanks for all of the great recipes especially this one.
I tried this recipe and everyone started to ask me where did u get these from….no one was convinced that i made these cookies me and my family and friends we all loved it and everyone keeps requesting me to make these again and again ☺ thanks alot for sharing this recipe
7 years later and these are still a hit with friends and family. Soft and chewy and absolutely perfect. We have stopped making regular chocolate chip cookies and this has become a family recipe. Also, the secret weapon to make anyones day.