Brown Butter Sugar Cookies

Drop-style brown butter sugar cookies are festively sprinkled, boast tons of flavor, and are ready in under an hour. This simple cookie recipe is an easy upgrade from classic sugar cookies—and will have you reaching for seconds.

Meet brown butter sugar cookies, a cookie whose flavor runs deep and is an easy upgrade from traditional sugar cookies. You’ll be surprised at how quickly and easily these cookies come together!

An Upgrade From Traditional Sugar Cookies

Traditional sugar cookies, whether that’s roll-out or drop sugar cookies, have their own distinct flavor. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but it’s somewhere in between sweet, butter, vanilla, and rainbows. I wanted to create a different kind of sugar cookie—one that could stand up to its big flavor besties—you know, the cookies loaded with chunks, nuts, molasses, oats, caramel, etc. Mission accomplished! Brown butter is always the answer.

These brown butter sugar cookies are:

• Drop style—no rolling pins, cookie cutters, or royal icing needed (try my cream cheese sugar cookies, drop style Christmas sugar cookies, and soft cakey sugar cookies for more no-roll sugar cookie recipes)
• Flavored with brown butter for an extra nutty, buttery flavor
• Topped with festive sprinkles—use your favorite colors or mix them up for different holidays
• Easy to make and ready in under an hour (just like my quick and easy shortbread recipe)
• Adorable and perfect for any gathering

Ingredients in Brown Butter Sugar Cookies

These cookies come together with only 8 ingredients (9 if you count the sprinkles)! Let’s review what you’ll need:

• Butter: We’re using brown butter in these cookies. Here’s a full tutorial on how to brown butter. (Use this one ingredient wonder in everything!)
• Flour: All-purpose flour is the base of these cookies.
• Baking Soda: Baking soda helps the cookies rise.
• Salt: Salt adds flavor.
• Sugar: To complement the brown butter flavor, you’ll use brown sugar in this recipe. However, to keep some of the traditional sugar cookie taste—we use some granulated sugar as well. An equal mix of both is just the flavor you’ll crave.
• Egg: One egg binds everything together.
• Vanilla Extract: Vanilla adds flavor. Try using homemade vanilla extract.
• Sprinkles: Sprinkles add a fun and festive touch!

Baker’s Tip: Even though we aren’t creaming butter and sugar together, I still recommend using a mixer to really get the sugar incorporated into the brown butter.

How to Chill Brown Butter Sugar Cookie Dough

This is a thick cookie dough. You *could* chill the dough and then roll into balls, but I found the dough a little too crumbly to roll after chilling. So I suggest rolling before chilling. This cookie dough isn’t all that wonderful for cookie cutter cookies—I had some crumbly issues. So I suggest sticking to drop cookie style. Easier that way, too!

Here’s what I do: After the dough is made, immediately begin rolling into 1 Tablespoon size balls and dunking into sprinkles—I like red and green nonpareils and/or gold sprinkles for these. After you dunk each one, place the cookie dough balls into the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. This will help solidify the butter so your cookies don’t spread all over the baking sheet. Likely happens when using melted butter!

Texture of Brown Butter Sugar Cookies

• Very soft in the centers
• Crisp bottoms
• Slightly chewy edges
• Crunch from sprinkles!

Taste of Brown Butter Sugar Cookies

• Brown butter-tastic, obviously
• Slight brown sugar flavor (for EXTRA brown sugar flavor, try my brown sugar cookies or brown sugar shortbread cookies)
• Sweet vanilla
• Brown butter brown butter brown butter

A must-bake for your annual lineup of Christmas cookies? I think so!

Print