brown butter chocolate chip cookies

On Sunday night, I was sitting here reflecting on the weekend, realizing how little I accomplished, and wishing that I had done some studying baking.  It was just this voice - that one stick of butter in my fridge - that kept calling me.  "You can do so much with me! What are you waiting for?" it cried.  "Yeah, yeah. I know," I said.  "But it's Sunday night. There's no one around to consume my creations other than me, and who knows what damage I could do with you!"

The butter won the argument.  Or rather, I suppose I did, since what I did was melt that sorry little stick into some brown butter. And I used it to modify my chocolate chip cookie recipe.  Purely for experimental purposes only.  I have always wanted to try this method, and the butter gave a good argument.  My hypothesis?  I may have to permanently adjust my all-time favorite ccc recipe - they say once you go brown, you never go back.  My initial reaction?  Well, it makes some damn good cookie dough.

Here's the butter almost complete.  I probably could have gone longer, but I could already smell the nuttiness, so I figured better safe than sorry.  After you brown the butter, you add it straight to your sugar mixture. But you cannot mix it!  You have to let the butter cool to room temperature with the sugar mixture.  I think what this does is caramelize some of that sugar a little bit to give even more of a caramel-y, nutty flavor to the cookies.

There it is.  Sugar, butter, and more sugar.  Let this sit in the fridge for about 5-7 minutes.  After it has cooled, you beat it together.  This is the first (and surprisingly only) part of the fun experiment that I started sweating a little.  Look what happened when I beat it, and the mixture was supposed to turn that fluffy, butter-sugar concoction that is the ever-present base for all cookie recipes:

No, it's not quinoa.  It's also not graham cracker crumbs, either.  It's what happens when you beat brown butter with brown sugar and white sugar when the butter isn't cool enough.  But, what is cool is what happens when you wait it out, and add the eggs.

Voilà!  Now that is one fluffy sugar/egg/sugar/brown butter mixture.  You really can't cream butter and sugar enough (ever), so I say have a field day.  Belt out a whole Miley Cyrus song while your mixer is plowing away.  It makes the cookies taste better.  As one of my favorite Top Chef contestants always said, "You have to cook with love."  Oh, Carla.

Once you're done creaming that goodness together, you stir in the vanilla.  Stir only, I say.  Then add your dry ingredients, just as you normally would.  Easy, right?  Now taste this stuff.  It is unmistakably the best cookie dough I've ever tasted in my life.  The brown butter adds a depth of flavor that you just don't expect from a regular ccc.  I hope you agree.

You may have noticed that my cookies, and my dough, lack some key chocolatey friends.  Like I initially explained, this was purely for experimental purposes.  I had no intention of consuming these, nor giving them away - I just wanted to try out the brown butter to see what the hype was all about.  So, I didn't want to put a whole bag of chocolate chips to scientific waste, did I?  No.  I merely took this dough, documented it, baked it, observed it, and disposed of it.  I won't give you any more detail than that.

The cookies baked well, but they didn't spread much - I just used a melon scooper to make even-sized cookies, but we'll see what happens when I really make these cookies (for an audience).  Overall, I was far more impressed by the taste of the brown butter in the dough than the baked cookies themselves.  I would be concerned that the extra flavor that the brown butter delivers could overpower the chocolate chips, but then again, it could compliment it well.  However, I could easily see myself concocting some other cookie recipe using this method...something nutty, caramel-y, totally fall-like...hmm.  Will this experiment's results lead me to permanently modifying my own tried-and-true ccc recipe?  Who knows.  Only another batch experiment will tell.


Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

from yours truly

1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour

2 cups cake flour

1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

1 ¼ teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk

2 sticks butter

1 ¼ cup light brown sugar

1 cup plus 2 tbsp granulated sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

¾ teaspoon coarse kosher salt

¾ package Gihardelli 60% cacao chocolate chips

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Cut up butter into small chunks and place in saucepan.  Heat over medium heat until completely melted, and continue to stir until butter becomes somewhat clear and brown-ish colored (about 5 minutes.)
3. Remove from heat and add to sugar mixture (do not stir or mix together) and allow to come to room temperature – put in fridge for about 5-7 minutes.  Once cooled, beat sugar and butter together until fluffy.
4. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well each time.  Stir in vanilla.
5. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.   Add flour mixture to butter and sugar mixture, one cup at a time, until just combined.  
6. Mix in chocolate chips.
7. Bake cookies on parchment paper-lined cookie sheet for approximately 12 minutes, until holes/cracks appear in middle of cookie and border becomes golden brown (depending on oven and cookie size.)  Let cool before serving.

Makes approximately 18 five-inch cookies.