Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Butter browned for nuttiness, dough rested overnight for depth, and chopped chocolate instead of chips so it pools into layers.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 290
- Calories
- 4g
- Protein
- 16g
- Fat
- 34g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 170 g unsalted butter
- 200 g light brown sugar
- 80 g caster sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 250 g plain flour
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 3/4 tsp fine salt
- 250 g dark chocolate, 70%
- Flaky sea salt, to finish
Instructions
- 1Melt the butter in a light-coloured saucepan over medium heat, then keep cooking it. It will foam, then quieten, and after 5 to 7 minutes the milk solids at the bottom will turn deep golden and it will smell like toffee and hazelnuts. Pour it immediately into a large bowl, scraping in every brown fleck — those solids are the flavour.
- 2Let the browned butter cool for 15 minutes. Hot butter scrambles the egg and melts the chocolate.
- 3Whisk in both sugars, then the egg, the extra yolk and the vanilla. Whisk for a full minute until glossy — this dissolves the sugar and gives the cookies their crackled tops.
- 4Chop the chocolate with a knife into irregular pieces, from shards to chunks. Chocolate chips contain stabilisers that hold their shape; chopped chocolate melts into pools and layers instead.
- 5Fold in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and fine salt until only a few dry streaks remain, then fold in the chocolate. Stop as soon as it comes together — overworked dough gives tough cookies.
- 6Cover and refrigerate for at least 24 hours, and up to 72. This is not about firming the dough. Over that time the flour fully hydrates and enzymes break starches into simpler sugars, which browns better and tastes noticeably more caramelised.
- 7Heat the oven to 180C fan and line two trays.
- 8Roll the dough into 16 balls and space them well apart — they spread a lot.
- 9Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Pull them when the edges are set and browned but the centres still look underbaked and puffy. They finish setting on the tray.
- 10Bang the tray once on the counter as it comes out to deflate the centres into ripples, sprinkle with flaky salt, and leave on the tray for 10 minutes before moving.
A chocolate chip cookie has maybe eight ingredients, and four choices separate a good one from an ordinary one. None of them cost anything.
Brown the butter
Butter is roughly 80 percent fat, 16 percent water and 4 percent milk solids. Heat it past the point of melting and the water boils off, and then those milk solids toast — the same Maillard reaction that browns meat and bread.
The result smells of toffee, hazelnut and butterscotch, and it carries through the whole cookie. It takes five minutes and one pan.
Use a pale saucepan so you can see the colour, and pour it out the moment the solids turn deep gold. They go from brown to burnt in about twenty seconds.
You lose the water to evaporation, which is why this recipe uses an extra yolk to compensate.
Rest the dough
Twenty-four hours in the fridge is the single largest improvement available, and it costs only patience.
Two things happen. The flour absorbs the liquid fully, which stops the cookies spreading into thin discs. And enzymes in the flour and egg break down starches and proteins into simpler sugars and amino acids — more raw material for browning, and a deeper, more caramelised flavour.
The difference between a same-day cookie and a 24-hour cookie is not subtle. 72 hours is better still.
Chop the chocolate
Chocolate chips are formulated with less cocoa butter and added stabilisers specifically so they hold their shape in the oven. That is useful for the manufacturer and dull to eat.
A chopped bar gives you everything from dust to chunks. The dust melts into the dough and streaks it; the chunks stay as pools. Every bite is different.
Underbake them
The centre of a cookie carries on cooking on a hot tray for several minutes after it leaves the oven. Bake until the middle looks done and it will be dry and crumbly once cool.
Pull them when the edges are set and browned and the centre still looks pale and slightly raw. Then bang the tray on the counter to collapse the puffed middles into ripples, and leave them alone for ten minutes.
The salt
Flaky salt on top hits the tongue directly rather than dissolved through the dough, and the contrast against the sweetness is what makes people eat a second one. Fine salt in the dough does a different job and both belong.
Nutrition
Around 290 calories a cookie from sixteen. Dark chocolate at 70 percent brings a genuine amount of iron, magnesium and copper, which is not a reason to eat cookies but is true.
The dough freezes as rolled balls for three months. Bake from frozen with two extra minutes.
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