I have been using brown butter in place of melted butter for many years, particularly in sauces and some baked goods, but I hadn’t thought to use it in cookies! And as usual, I have been inundated with a lot of brown butter cookie recipes (has Google and Meta figured out how to read my mind?). Unfortunately, they all seemed quite time-consuming: chilling the browned butter, chilling the batter etc., that is until I found this lovely recipe in Southern Living. Of course, I had to change it to weight measures, and, I never have salted butter on hand, so I upped the salt a tiny bit (from 5 g to 6 g) to compensate.
Brown butter is ridiculously easy to prepare, just melt the butter on medium heat and simmer it until the milk solids turn golden. That’s it. It really takes simple things to the next level. I love it in Béchamel sauce, whether I’m using it with roasted puréed garlic or just on its own. If your recipe contains melted butter, next time, take it to the next level and brown it.
Brown Butter Belgium Chocolate Chunk Cookies
(the famous BBB-CCC)
For the original recipe, please click here.
Makes 41, 30 g cookies
Ingredients:
- 170 g unsalted butter
- 240 g brown sugar
- 120 g granulated sugar
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- 10 mL pure vanilla extract
- 315 g all-purpose flour
- 5 g baking soda
- 6 g table salt
- 240 g milk and semisweet Belgium chocolate disks, roughly chopped
- 115 g walnuts, chopped and toasted
Directions:
- Melt the butter in a light-coloured saucepan and simmer until the milk solids have turned golden. Pour into a small flat baking sheet with sides and cool to room temperature and refrigerate until solid (I did this the day before). When you are ready to make the cookies, remove the butter from the fridge and bring the butter to room temperature.
- Combine the sugars in the large bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the scraper paddle. Scrape the butter into the sugars and beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well, add the vanilla and beat well until incorporated. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt and mix well. Add to the cookie batter and mix just until the flour is entirely incorporated. Fold in the chocolate chunks and walnuts.
- If baking them now, preheat the oven to 350° F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment and portion out 30g of batter about 5 cm apart on the pan (a scant medium Ice Cream Scoop ~ 4.5 cm in diametre). You can freeze the cookie balls at this point and bake them up individually as needed.
- If baking now, bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden on the bottom. If they baked-up irregularly, use a large glass to coax them into a rounder shape. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
Notes:
- I like to freeze unbaked cookie balls so that we can be deliberate about how many cookies we really want after a meal, that way you bake only the number you want and if you want more, you have to really think about it.
- Baking cookies from frozen will take a few extra minutes (12-14 minutes) but once they defrost in the oven, they bake up rather quickly so be diligent.
Eva, brown butter chocolate chip cookies sound delightful. Funny I should see this recipe because I was thinking yesterday, I wanted to make cookies with my abundance of chocolate chips. Brown butter has an almost caramel feel to it. Lovely recipe.
Velva
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Thank you Velva, they turned out amazing and well worth the extra effort it takes. But I probably wouldn’t make it for kids unless they are total foodies.
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I love your tip about baking them to order. I also noted your suspicion that Google is reading your mind. Did this happen about 30 days after your first corona vaccine? Can I just start that entire conspiracy theory right here and now in your blog comments? Anyway, what I find interesting is how I’ll be making something – like chocolate chip cookies with melted butter – and then I’ll see a recipe for something along those same lines in one of my favorite blogs!
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Thank you for your kind words, Jeff. Interesting correlation with the vaccine and google…I’m not quite ready to jump on that bandwagon yet but I will keep the coincidence in mind when/if I decide to go for the next one! Hope you try the brown butter, you won’t regret it.
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I love browned butter for its unique nutty and overall more complex flavour. And this cookies? These kind of cookies are too sweet to my liking, but must admit they still look utterly delicious and inviting! 🙂
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The cookies are coying, they are sweet, don’t get me wrong, but they are definitely not OTT for cookies. Thank you for your comment.
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Brown butter is one of my favourite ingredients too! It adds so much amazing flavour to baked good! I really have to try these – thanks Eva!
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They are very good. Thank you for your comment.
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Reading your recipe gives me a reason to get out of bed and check my larder for ingredients.
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Hi Ruth, it’s been a minute. Hope you are well and enjoying what is left of the summer. I’ll pop by and see what you’ve been up to on the blog.
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I seriously could drink browned butter…that stuff is just too good!
angiesrecipes
http://angiesrecipes.blogspot.com
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That would be something, drinking brown butter. It really is that good!
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Mmmm….these look (and sound) terrific!!! I’ll have to make a batch for Bill sans nuts!!!
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Mr BFF’s hubby is adverse to nuts too, but he will eat almond flour! Go figure. Thank you for your comment Liz.
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