Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

Chocolate chip cookies are a favorite with, well, just about everyone, and you might think that there's no improving on the original Toll House recipe. Maybe so, maybe no, but it's always fun to experiment now and then, and recipe developer Jennine Bryant insists that the use of brown butter in these cookies "adds so much more depth of flavor to the cookie dough." She goes on to describe the cookies as having a "caramelized, nutty flavor," something she says makes them "really stand out and gives them that real, fresh bakery-bought flavor."

Bryant also points out that this recipe calls for an ingredient she says isn't standard for most chocolate chip cookies. The cornstarch, she tells us, "thickens and softens the cookies," resulting in something that is "crunchy on the outside [and] chewy and soft on the inside."

Consider us sold! Read on to find out how to make these oh-so-tempting sweet treats.

To make the brown butter, you will, of course, need butter. While Bryant likes to bake with unsalted butter, you can use the salted kind if that's what you have; simply reduce the amount of additional salt in the recipe by ¼ teaspoon.

The other ingredients you'll need to make these cookies include brown sugar, white sugar, an egg, vanilla extract, flour, cornstarch, baking powder, salt, and chocolate chips or chunks. As you can see in the photo, Bryant made her cookies with the latter, but assures us that chocolate chips work just as well here.

Melt the butter over a low heat, then keep cooking it for another 4 to 5 minutes after it melts. The trick with brown butter is turning off the heat pretty quickly once it's brown, but before it starts to burn. As Bryant notes, "when the butter starts to foam up, the browning happens quite quickly, so you need to continually monitor it." One way you can tell if your brown butter is done is when it stops making a sizzling noise. Browned butter should also smell a bit like roasted nuts.

Before you can proceed with the batter, you need to allow the brown butter to cool down a bit. After 15 or so minutes, stir in both sugars, then add the egg and the vanilla. Mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl, then fold them into the egg mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips, then put the dough in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Roll tablespoon-sized balls of dough, then arrange them on a baking sheet (or, more likely, several baking sheets) 2 inches apart. Bake the cookies (in batches if necessary) for 12 minutes, or until the edges turn golden. Once the cookies come out of the oven, keep them on the pan for 5 minutes before you move them to a wire rack. Once they've cooled down completely, they are ready to eat. If you prefer them warm from the oven, that's okay, too, but at least wait until the chocolate is cool enough so that it won't burn your mouth.

Bryant suggests that the cookies are at their freshest if consumed within 3 days, but you can keep them in an airtight container in the refrigerator if you don't think you can finish them quite so quickly. You can also freeze them to eat at a much later date. Future you will be very appreciative.