I found this recipe on Sam Merrit‘s blog, a sure-fire place for recipes that are both awesome to eat and easy to follow. I’ve made a couple of modest additions, but she deserves credit for this, the absolute best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever made.
What makes these the best are the little tweaks that she’s added–things like browning the butter or putting flake salt on the cookies while they are cooling. I also like that she gives ingredients by weight, the only sure way to know you have the right proportions.
You can certainly make these with a hand mixer, especially since you don’t have to cream the butter. I generally use my stand mixer, though, because it’s generally easier to manage. Essential tools, though, are a good kitchen scale and silicon baking sheets for your cookie sheets. You might have a hard time finding flake salt, but Amazon carries the best brand, Maldon’s, at a reasonable price. Everything else is a kitchen staple readily available at the grocery store.
There’s quite a bit of waiting time while making these cookies. First, you have to wait for the brown butter to cool to room temperature and, second, you have to chill the dough before you can make the cookies. The actual time you spend prepping is maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. How long it takes to bake the cookies depends on the size of your cookie sheets. I can get at least 15 cookies on each of my extra-big sheets, so I generally can finish this with just three rounds of baking, but that’s still 30+ minutes.
When forming the cookies, I always use latril gloves. The dough doesn’t stick, and it’s more sanitary and makes cleanup easier, too.
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Materials
- 225 g (1 C) unsalted butter
- 200 g (1 C) light or dark brown sugar
- 135 g (2/3 C) granulated sugar
- 2 Large eggs
- 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
- 0.5 tsp almond extract (optional–my addition)
- 340 g (2.75 C) flour
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon (optional–my addition)
- 1 tsp corn starch
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 0.75 tsp salt
- 285 g (1.75 C) semi-sweet chcolate chips
- 150 g chopped walnuts (optional–my addition)
- Flake salt for sprinkling
Instructions
- cut the butter into 1 TBSP pats, then quarter and place in skillet with low-to-medium heat. A stainless steel skillet works best so you can see the brown bits form.
- Once the butter is melted, raise the heat to just above medium and stir with a wooden spoon or spatula. The butter will sputter and foam, but eventually settle down. Keep watching for the brown bits starting to foam.
- As soon as they form, remove from heat pour the butter into a heat-proof bowl. I use the bowl from my stand mixer.
- Now WAIT for the butter to come to room temperature. That's going to take at least 30 minutes, which is most of your prep time. Do NOT add the sugars and *especially* the eggs until the sugar is cool to the touch. You don't want scrambled eggs in your cookie batter!
- While the butter is cooling, you can measure out the all dry ingredients except for the sugars (that's the flour, corn starch, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon, if using) in a separate bowl. Once you've measured them out, whisk them together so they are thoroughly mixed. Also put your eggs on the counter to bring them to room temperature while the butter cools.
- You can also measure out the chocolate chips now an put them in another bowl. If you're using nuts, you can measure and chop them now, too. I chop them in two or three batchies, using three quick pulses in a Ninja chopper for each batch. After you chop a batch, just mix them within the bowl with the chips.
- Once the butter is cool, add the sugars to the bowl and stir. In my case, I mixed using the paddle attachment of my stand mixer. Mix until they are blended; they should be smooth and not grainy.
- Once the sugar and butter is mixed and smooth, add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.
- Finally, add the vanilla extract and almond extract, if using, and mix again.
- Add about a third of the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Use a spatula to wipe the bowl if needed. Repeat two more times until the dry ingredients are mixed. The dough will be sticky but should clean the sides of the bowl.
- Finally, add the chips and nuts to the bowl, again in thirds, mixing on low after each addition. Don't use high speed–you don't want to smash the chips or nuts.
- Now pre-heat 350 F
- While the oven pre-heats, cover the dough and put it in your refrigerator to chill for 20-30 minutes. This is why you wait until now to pre-heat your oven. My oven takes about 20 minutes to come to temperature, so by then the dough should be chill enough to work with. Chilling the dough accounts for another big chunk of prep time.
- The original recipe says to make the cookies with 2TBSP of dough for each cookie. This makes really big cookies. I roll the dough into walnut-sized balls and get more conventionally sized cookies and, coincidentally, a higher number of cookies. It's up to you.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes. Cookies will be really soft when they first come out of the oven and may even appear under-cooked. After about a minute, while they are still on the cookie sheet, sprinkle them with the flake salt.
- Let the cookies cool for at least ten minutes on the cookie sheet before removing them.
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