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)
- Sweet vanilla
- Brown butter brown butter brown butter
A must-bake for your annual lineup of Christmas cookies? I think so!
PrintBrown Butter Sugar Cookies
- Prep Time: 45 minutes
- Cook Time: 13 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 36 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
Brown butter sugar cookies are easy to make, incredibly flavorful, and ready in under an hour!
Ingredients
- 1 cup (16 Tbsp; 226g) unsalted butter
- 2 cups + 2 Tablespoons (265g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup (150g) granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup (150g) packed light brown sugar
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- optional: sprinkles and/or nonpareils for topping
Instructions
- Brown the butter: Have a large heat-proof bowl handy. Slice the butter into pieces and place in a light-colored skillet. (Light colored helps you determine when the butter begins browning.) Melt the butter over medium heat, whisking occasionally. Once melted, the butter will begin to foam. Keep whisking occasionally. After 5–8 minutes, the butter will begin browning; you’ll notice lightly browned specks begin to form at the bottom of the pan and it will have a nutty aroma. See photo above for a visual. Once browned, remove from heat immediately, pour into bowl. Allow to cool for 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.
- Add the granulated sugar and brown sugar to the brown butter. Using a handheld mixer or stand mixer with paddle attachment, beat together on medium-high speed until relatively combined, about 1 minute. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract.
- Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and begin beating together on low speed, slowly working up to high speed until everything is combined. The dough will be thick and a little greasy. That’s ok! Just roll into balls as best you can in the next step.
- Roll the dough into balls, about 1 Tablespoon of dough each, and dip the tops into sprinkles. Place dough balls tightly together on a lined baking sheet (or a couple large plates). Loosely cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator to chill for 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. (Always recommended for cookies.)
- Line chilled dough balls onto baking sheets about 3 inches apart. Bake for 12–13 minutes or until lightly browned on the sides. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes then transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.
Notes
- Make Ahead & Freezing Instructions: Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week. You can make the cookie dough, roll into balls as directed in step 5 and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Allow to come to room temperature then continue with step 6. 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): Light-Colored Skillet | Whisk | Glass Mixing Bowl | Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Baking Sheets | Silicone Baking Mats or Parchment Paper | Cooling Rack | Red & Green Nonpareils | Gold Sprinkles
- I don’t recommend these cookies for roll-out/cookie cutter cookies. The dough is a little too crumbly for it. It’s easier to just bake as drop cookies. Enjoy!
Keywords: brown butter sugar cookies, brown butter cookies
I made these cookies for the first time for Christmas and my husband loved them. He couldn’t stop raving about how delicious they were. The brown butter makes such a difference. I’ve made them again since Christmas and have a feeling will be making them often.
I also made your chocolate kiss cookies and they were yummy also.
Hi Sally! I’ve never been a sugar cookie person but I saw your recipe and knew my cookie life was about to change…these are AMAZING!! I made them Wednesday night and there’s 2 left out of 36! Thank you so much for another incredible recipe! A
Sally these cookies are simply amazing as are all of your recipes. You were right they don’t need anything but sprinkles. I have made a lot of your recipes and haven’t had a fail yet. It is nice knowing that I can go to any of your recipes and have an amazing turnout every single time. Thank you so much!
I’m going to make these today but will also be adding white chocolate chips, dried cherries and macadamia nuts. Do you think this will work with my add-ins?
Yes, absolutely!
These cookies are simply awesome! Mine came out a bit more rounded, didn’t flatten out as much as the picture showed. Not a problem, but I’m wondering why that would be. I did double the recipe so I could make more. I was very careful with my ingredients, so I am 99% positive I didn’t make any ingredient mistakes. Love this cookie!
Did anyone have issues with the cookies mostly keeping their shape, but getting deep cracks? Each cookie looks slightly crisp at the edge, and soft/slightly moist in the center, but in the recipe photos, I don’t see any deep cracks, and each of my cookies has about three cracks.
Thanks!!! Love this site … make many birthday cakes for my two young girls from your recipes.
Jeannie
You’ve made my Christmas! I have made a variation of this recipe from a Cooking Light magazine for YEARS. The pro final recipe I used were roll and cut. They were beautiful but the dough was soooo crumbly and was so frustrating to work with! Some years I avoided making them altogether, but they taste sooooo good! Enter your recipe with the brown sugar and a couple things I tried, and i was able to get roll cookies!!!
I browned the butter and put it in my stand mixer to cool slightly. I added the sugars. Then I inadvertently left the sugar and butter out on the counter over night as I didn’t get to finishing this particular batch. When I started mixing the bowlcompletely cooled butter and sugar, it creamed just like regular butter would—AND made dough that I could roll and cut!!! I needed a few more batches and didn’t feel like waiting overnight so I followed the same and mixed the butter and sugars and then put it outside until it was firm. Then mixed it and I had creamed sugars again with non-crumbly dough that I could roll and cut! I had previously tried to just refrigerate the brown butter and that didn’t work. Something about mixing in the sugars first and then refrigerating and then mixing again.
Wow. Browning the butter really adds a richness to the dough. My son loved eating it right out of the bowl! I tend to like sugar cookies with a hint of almond. I’m wondering if adding almond extract would make it too confusing?
I think almond would pair wonderfully with the brown butter. Go for it!
Hey Sally! Mine were really
Good- but dough was super crumbly – that make sense?!
Hi Sally! What would it be like to add the mini m&ms to these? Thanks!
Absolutely! I would add at least 1 cup of mini M&Ms to this dough. Maybe a little more for extra chocolate. Never a bad thing!
Made these last night and the Flavor is AMAZING! Right out of the oven they were perfect. Beautifully browned edges, perfect size, spread fine…However, but the next day they weren’t soft anymore. 🙁 They ended up being dry and crispy and I’m not a fan of dry cookies. I had to make two batches as my cookie scoop only produced 2 dozen and I ate so many I didn’t have enough to take to the office party. I baked for 12 minutes and I think I’m going to try again with a shorter bake time. I’m really looking for a soft chewy cookie. But you can’t beat the flavor!
Just made these (without sprinkles, which are sadly lacking in my kitchen). They’re fantastic!
Really fun to make. Delicious, too!!!
Wow this was my first successful attempt at browning butter for a recipe! So glad for all the pix and tips on how to do that super important step. I absolutely could not believe the flavor difference and the immediate aroma saying Eat Me! I should know this by now but I didn’t start off with a double batch 😉 I was also surprised at how quickly this recipe came together and I had fresh cookies popping out of my oven! So very happy with this recipe! Finders Eaters Keepers 🙂
I made these cookies last night and for some reason, the dough would NOT work for me! It stayed kind of crumbly while mixing it, no matter how much I did. I was able to roll (most) into balls, but I really had to compact them in order for the balls to stay together without cracking apart. And they didn’t spread to create nice cookies like yours, they stayed almost in the lump they started in and were almost crunchy, despite me underbaking them from your time suggestion. Any ideas why this happened? Not enough butter? But it was measured correctly… the flavour was there just.. .not the rest.
Hi Michelle! There’s an easy fix if you want to try them again. Simply reduce the flour by 2 Tablespoons. This will help! I find the dough is extra crumbly when the air is very dry.
I recently discovered the beauty of browned butter and knew I had to make these for my Christmas cookie trays! They came out amazing and are much tastier than your typical sugar cookie. Thank you so much for this! My sister and I love to bake using your recipes. Every cookie on our trays come from your site :0)
The best part about being home from college for Christmas break is baking! I made a batch of these tonight and they were to die for! Everyone in my family loved them. Thanks for the delicious recipes!
Great flavor but mine seemed dry; some broke open while baking and they didn’t flatten out much.
I just made these last night. They are so good!! I loved browning the butter, the aroma was just like you said:)! First batch of Christmas cookies of the season!
Very yummy!! My cookies turned out taller than yours and took a few minutes extra to bake. I wonder if I didn’t need to refrigerate the dough for as long because my kitchen was cold.
Did anyone have trouble with the nonpareils sticking to the rolled balls???
That happened to me a few times, but the warmth of your hands help soften the balls of dough so the sprinkles can stick. Also, you can press the balls of dough into the sprinkles. That helps!
Eating these right out of the oven and OMG they are so amazing and flavorful. Wonderful recipe!!
Help Sally!!! My dough is not thick and is very soft. Did i do something wrong? They’re really flat in the fridge right now!
Really? Chilling the dough in the fridge for a little longer will help. Try chilling up to 2 hours.
I had the same worry – my hands were drenched in butter while rolling the cookies. So I added 25g of flour to half the batch and left the other half as Sally directed. Just took both batches out of the oven. The batch I left alone (ie: recipe as written) are fabulous, intense brown butter taste and the cookies are perfectly soft. The flavour in the batch I added flour to is nowhere near as intense and the cookies are more dense. Lesson learned, just listen to Sally for crying out loud! And don’t panic if the dough is very greasy, the results are amazing.
Question: If I roll these into balls and freeze them, do I dip them in the sprinkles before freezing or after I’ve removed them from the freezer? Do I bake them at room temperature or refrigerator temperature? Thanks. This recipe sounds delicious.
Hi Kimberly! You can roll into balls with sprinkles, then freeze. See my make ahead tip for other freezing instructions 🙂
Just finished making these…….so delicious!