There’sย as much flavor in oneย of these brown butter chocolate chip cookies as there is in an entire batch of ordinary chocolate chip cookies. If you’ve browned butter before, you’re familiar with the unsurpassable flavor that comes along with it. Browning butter can be done on the stovetop. The aroma of browned butter alone is enough to make anyone salivate and the flavor is absolutely marvelous.
What is Brown Butter?
Browning butter is a technique that considerably changes the flavor of anything it touches. I wrote an entire tutorial on how to brown butter if you’re interested in learning more about this one ingredient wonder. Browning butter is simple because all youโre doing is gently cooking butter. This melting method gently cooks the butter until it develops a deep nutty flavor, browned color, and toasted aroma. You can taste this upgraded flavor in recipes like brown butter pound cake, banana layer cake with brown butter cream cheese frosting, and today’s chocolate chip cookie recipe.
How to Brown Butter
How to brown butter: Cut the butter into uniform pieces and place in a light-colored pan or skillet over medium heat. The light color of the pan allows for easier visual monitoring of color changes. Stir as the butter melts to ensure even heating. Once full melted, continue to cook. The butter will begin to foam as water content evaporates and the milk solids toast at the bottom of the pan. Watch closely; the butter will turn a golden amber color which indicates that the milk solids have toasted. It will smell nutty, and the sound of sizzling will stop. At this point, immediately remove from heat and pour into a heat-proof bowl. There will be little bits of milk solids at the bottom of the pan. Don’t leave those behind! The toasted milk solids carry flavor.
Can I Use Brown Butter in Any Cookie Recipe?
Going the extra mile to brown butter for cookie recipes makes a good cookie, a great cookie. But browning butter isn’t a technique that will work with ALL cookie recipes. Typically the recipe requires some testing if you’re replacing creamed butter with browned butter or melted butter with browned butter.
What’s the reason? During the browning process, as butter goes from yellow to golden amber in color, it loses some moisture, about a 20-35% loss. This is a considerable amount of moisture to leave out of your recipe! Maybe adding a little extra butter or another egg yolk to the cookie recipe will make up for this moisture loss? But then you may have too much concentrated fat in the cookie recipe. Confused? Trust me, I was too when I was working on this recipe.
Let me make it easy for you. Browning butter = unbeatable flavor with moisture loss. Cookie dough using browned butter needs extra moisture. Adding 1-2 Tablespoons of milk will add the proper amount of moisture back to the dough.
Chilling is Crucial for Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Chill browned butter: After browning the butter, chill it in the refrigerator. Chilling the brown butter will solidify it. Once chilled into a solid mass, cream it with the sugars just as if you were creaming softened butter. The key to chilling the brown butter? Chill it in a large container or baking pan. The larger the container or pan, the thinner the layer of butter will be and the quicker it will solidify.
- Chill cookie dough: After the cookie dough is all mixed up, you have to chill it again. This takes another 3 hours, but there’s a reason for it. Chilling cookie dough not only ensures a thicker, more solid cookie but an accentuated flavor. Time in the refrigerator develops a heightened flavor.
Chilling the brown butter until it’s totally solid takes about 2-3 hours and chilling the prepared cookie dough requires the same. We’re looking at 4-6 hours of chill time. Taking this time guarantees thick and majorly flavorful chocolate chip cookies. I promise they’re worth the wait!
How does this recipe compare to these popular chewy chocolate chip cookies? That cookie uses melted butter, not browned. You can definitely sub brown butter for melted (in fact, some readers have!) but I find the resulting cookie a little crumbly which is in part to the missing moisture, explained above.
Quick Tips for Perfect Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Cornstarch: Cornstarch creates a softer cookie. Do not leave it out! Use it in my shortbread cookies, too.
- Sugars: Use more brown sugar than white for a chewier, softer cookie.
- Eggs: An extra egg yolk equals a richer tasting cookie.
- Milk: Milk makes up for the loss of moisture in the browning process.
- Plan Ahead: Make sure you plan ahead and have enough time for both stages of chilling. Chilling is everything in this cookie recipe.
- Nuts: Feel free to add chopped nuts like pecans or walnuts, making sure to leave the total amount of add-ins (including chocolate chips) at 1 and 1/2 cups.
- Pro Tip: Sandwich butter pecan ice cream in the center of two cookies. You’re welcome.
If there are any cookies leftover, wait until you try these brown butter chocolate chip cookies on day 2. The flavor is out of this world!
Print
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Prep Time: 7 hours
- Cook Time: 12 minutes
- Total Time: 8 hours
- Yield: 24 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
Brown butter chocolate chip cookies are thick, chewy, and unlike any other chocolate chip cookie. There’sย as much flavor in oneย of these brown butter chocolate chip cookies as there is in an entire batch of classic chocolate chip cookies!
Ingredients
- 1 cup (16 Tbsp; 226g) unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 1 cup (200g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 2 and 1/2 cups (313g) all-purpose flourย (spooned & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 Tablespoons (30ml)ย milk
- 1 and 1/2 cups (270g) semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Brown the butter: Have a large flat heat-proof baking dish, such as a 9×13-inch pan, handy. Slice the butter into pieces and place in a light-colored skillet. The light colored helps you determine when the butter begins browning. Melt the butter over medium heat and stir or whisk constantly. Once melted, the butter will begin to foam. Keep stirring/whisking. After 5-7 minutes, the butter will begin browning and you’ll notice lightly browned specks begin to form at the bottom of the pan, which are the milk solids toasting. Cook until it is golden in color. Once browned, remove from heat immediately and pour into dish. Cover tightly, place in the refrigerator, and chill until solid, about 2-3 hours (or up to 1 day). A large flat dish, as opposed to a bowl, helps the butter solidify quicker.
- Remove solid brown butter from the refrigerator and spoon into a large bowl (or the bowl of your stand mixer). Using a handheld mixer or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the chilled brown butter for 1 minute on medium speed until completely smooth and creamy. Add the granulated sugar and brown sugar and beat on medium high speed until light in color and combined, about 2 minutes. Beat in egg, egg yolk, and vanilla extract on high speed. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed.
- In a separate bowl,ย whisk theย flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt together until combined. On low speed, slowly mix into the wet ingredients until combined, then beat in the milk on medium speed. The cookie dough will be thick. Add the chocolate chips andย mix on low for about 5-10 seconds until combined. Cover dough tightly with aluminum foil or plastic wrap and chill for at least 2-3 hours and up to 3 days. Chilling is mandatory for this cookie dough or else the cookies will over-spread.
- Remove cookie dough from the refrigerator and allow to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes as you preheat the oven. This makes the cookie dough easier to scoop and roll. (If the cookie dough chilled longer than 3 hours, let it sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes.)
- Preheat oven to 350ยฐF (177ยฐC). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
- Once chilled, the dough may be slightly crumbly, but will come together if you work the dough with your hands as you roll into individual balls. Scoop and roll dough, about 1.5 Tablespoons of dough each (I use this medium cookie scoop), into balls.
- Bake the cookies for 12-14 minutes, or until slightly golden brown around the edges. My oven has hot spots and yours may too so be sure to rotate the pan once during bake time. The baked cookies will look soft in the centers when you remove them from the oven. Allow to cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet. If the cookies are too puffy, try gently pressing down on them with the back of a spoon. During this time, you can press a few extra chocolate chips into the top of the warm cookies. This is just for looks! The cookies will slightly deflate as you let them cool.
- After 5 minutes, transfer cookies to a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead Instructions: You can make the cookie dough and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Allow to come to room temperature then continue with step 5. Baked cookies freeze well for up to 3 months. Unbaked cookie dough balls freeze well for up to 3 months. Bake frozen cookie dough balls for an extra minute, no need to thaw. Read my tips and tricks on how to freeze cookie dough.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): ย Light-Colored Skilletย orย Stainless Steel Skillet | 9×13-inch Baking Dish (or similar large heat-proof baking dish) | Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Baking Sheet | Silicone Baking Mat or Parchment Paper | Medium Cookie Scoop | Cooling Rackย
- Dough Chilling Alternative: Chill the cookie dough as a whole for 1 hour. Then remove from the refrigerator and roll into 1.5 Tablespoon balls, as the recipe suggests before baking. Continue to chill the cookie dough balls for the remaining 2-3 hours (or freeze them as suggested in the last step). Some readers find this easier! If you do this, you do not have to let the cookie dough sit at room temperature in the next step.
- Be sure to check out my top 5 cookie baking success tips AND these are my 10 must-have cookie baking tools.
Reader Comments and Reviews
If I wanted to cut the recipe in half, would you suggest just using one whole egg?
Hi Chelsea! The best thing to do would be to mix together one egg + one egg yolk, then use half the mixture. Using 1 egg should work ok here, with less trouble. Otherwise it may be best to just make a full batch and freeze the extras for later!
I made this exactly as instructed the only thing I changed was one hour in the fridge and 20 min maybe in the freezer I didnโt have 2 hours to wait! I rolled the dough on the pans I was going to cook with and put it all in the freezer, from their I put it in the oven for 16 min since my pans were cold and they turned out great, no spreading! Maybe the freezer is the trick. I would have just put them in the freezer for one hour and I think I will just do that next time to cut some time off! I love any Sally recipe, Iโve made so many they never fail me!
Making this again for the second time! Making them again on Friday for a lunch BBQ with friends on Saturday! I never thought buttering butter would be so good! Today, browning my butter, it got really foamy when I took my eyes off it for a few minutes! I was not whisking! Is this why it got foamy!? I was afraid it was going to boil over and make a giant mess! Thank God it didnโt!
Hi Michelle! Foaming is a normal part of the browning process and is to be expected. It’s the water evaporating so that the milk solids can brown. Continuing to whisk will help it eventually subside and prevent the butter from burning. So glad these cookies are a favorite for you!