Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

First of all, let's be real. Size matters, and these brown butter chocolate chip cookies are big, thick, and generously studded with gargantuan puddles of gooey dark chocolate. There are miles of delicately crisp edges to nibble on, and chewy middles that remind you life isn't always a battle.

Table of Contents

• 🥰 Is this brown butter chocolate chip cookies recipe for you?
• 🧾 Ingredients
• 📖 Recipe
• 🔪 How to make brown butter chocolate chip cookies
• 🧈 How to make brown butter
• 😱 What can go wrong (and how to fix it)
• 🍽 More chocolate chip cookie recipes
• 💬 Comments

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🥰 Is this brown butter chocolate chip cookies recipe for you?

• You believe chocolate chip cookies should be large enough to have their own zip code.
• Your preferred chocolate-to-cookie ratio is somewhere around "yes."
• You're willing to brown the butter because those few extra minutes buy you all kinds of toasty, caramel-y flavor.
• You like your cookies crisp around the edges, soft and chewy through the middle, and structurally capable of surviving a good dunk in cold milk.
• You have absolutely no intention of waiting until they're completely cool before eating one. We're bakers, not saints.

🧾 Ingredients

We've never been accused of being good role models around here. Make it decadent. Make it delicious. Or don't bother making it at all.

• All-purpose flour - Measure it correctly or you'll get cakey little doorstops and nobody asked for that. If you like cookies to be more dense and cakier add 2 tablespoons extra.
• Kosher salt - Salt balances the flavors. If you're using regular table salt use a little less.
• Baking soda - Gives us just enough rise and helps those edges get crisp and glorious.
• Eggs + egg yolk - That extra yolk brings richness and chew because apparently two whole eggs weren't doing enough.
• Brown sugar - Moisture, deep caramel flavor, and the reason the middles stay deliciously chewy.
• Granulated sugar - This is where those miles of delicate, crispy edges come from.
• Browned butter - Regular butter could never. Toasty, nutty, caramel-y, and absolutely worth standing over a skillet for a few minutes.
• Vanilla - Four teaspoons. Yes, four. I said what I said.
• Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips - These big, flat beauties melt into enormous puddles of dark chocolate instead of politely maintaining chip formation. We have no use for polite chocolate here.

📖 Recipe

🔪 How to make brown butter chocolate chip cookies

Brown butter chocolate chip cookies aren't difficult, but they do require a tiny bit of restraint, mostly involving not eating the dough.

1. Blend the brown butter with both sugars then stir in the eggs, yolk, and vanilla.
2. Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt and mix into the butter mixture.
3. Stir in the chocolate chips.
4. Measure onto a parchment covered cookie sheet with ⅛ cup measure and put in the freezer 10 minutes before baking as directed.

🧈 How to make brown butter

Brown butter is easy to make. If you've never done it before here's how.

😱 What can go wrong (and how to fix it)

🍪 My cookies spread into one enormous cookie continent. Your brown butter was probably too warm when you mixed the dough. Let it cool until it's just barely warm, and put the formed cookies in the freezer for 10 minutes before baking.

🍪 They didn't spread enough. Too much flour is usually lurking at the scene of the crime. Weigh the flour if you can, and don't pack it into the measuring cup unless you're hoping to build a small retaining wall.

🍪 The cookies are dry instead of chewy. They're probably overbaked. Pull them when the edges are set but the centers still look slightly underdone, about 190F. They'll finish baking on the hot cookie sheet while you stand nearby pretending you're going to wait for them to cool.

🍪 My brown butter has little dark specks in it. Did I ruin it? Nope. Those toasted milk solids are where all that glorious nutty flavor lives. Black specks accompanied by the smell of regret, however, mean you've gone too far.

🍪 They're greasy. Make sure the browned butter has cooled before mixing it with the sugars and eggs. Warm butter can turn the whole operation slippery faster than a Southern politician at tax time.

🍪 I don't have those giant chocolate puddles. Use big, flat chocolate chips or chopped chocolate. Smaller chips will still make a perfectly delicious cookie, but they tend to remain tidy little chips instead of melting into glorious chocolate sinkholes.

🍪 The middles look underdone. Excellent. We may be right on schedule. The centers should look soft when the cookies come out of the oven, then set as they cool. If you wait until the middles look completely baked in the oven, you've probably already wandered too far into Crunchy Cookie Country.

🍽 More chocolate chip cookie recipes

🏡 These brown butter chocolate chip cookies are everything a chocolate chip cookie ought to be: big, buttery, slightly crisp around the edges, chewy in the middle, and absolutely reckless with the chocolate. Pour yourself a glass of cold milk, eat one while it's still warm, and remember that life is good, adulting is hard, and everything is better with a warm cookie.