Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Brown butter chocolate chip cookies. Honestly, just chocolate chip cookies.. it’s hard to go wrong. Everyone thinks their chocolate chip cookie recipe is the best one. Honestly, a lot of them aren’t that different other than do they contain nuts or not. Which that is a very controversial topic so I didn’t even think about adding them – even though I don’t mind them added. No, I decided to add brown butter, which isn’t ground breaking but I also use a combination of bread flour and all-purpose to really give you that chewy cookie.

I’m not going to claim my brown butter chocolate chip cookies are the best chocolate chip cookies of all time or the best you’ve ever tasted. I will say, they are very delicious. I know it’s a cookie so it’s hard to go wrong but I say, try them out and see how they stack up against your usual recipe. I will also say this is now MY go-to recipe and I like a lot of CCC recipes. I usually have a batch of these brown butter chocolate chip cookies and my Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies in the freezer for whenever I have a cookie craving.

I know some people are not going to be with me with the flaky sea salt on top but trust me. It makes the chocolate flavor sing, it pairs SO well with the sweetness making it better but you also get the salty and it’s great. Could you omit? Of course but I’m going to advocate to add it. Also, if you’ve never had flaky sea salt, it’s a top tier salt and it’s not too expensive. It’s a great finishing salt for a lot of things. It’s not the same as kosher or sea or table salt, so don’t try any of those. This is what you want.

It’s also worth noting that bread flour changes the texture of the cookie and if you don’t have any, it’s worth getting a bag. Besides, then you can also bake up some bread with it when you’re done! If I had to recommend some that might feel like they are in the same vein maybe try: Brown Butter Brioche or Super Soft Brown Butter Cinnamon Rolls.

Baking Tips

The size of your cookie scoop will affect your baking time. I tested these with a cookie scoop that was roughly two tablespoons (a #30 scoop). If you use a smaller cookie scoop, the bake time will decrease, a larger one will lengthen it. If your cookies are closer to a 4tbsp scoop, they should bake for about 15 minutes. A smaller scoop I’d check on them at about 8 minutes.

This baking sheet is what I use to chill cookie dough. I find it much easier to scoop cookie dough then chill it than to try and scoop dough that is chilled. I do this with any cookies but especially these brown butter chocolate chip cookies, or any cookie with chocolate or nuts in the dough. I have broken a scoop before trying to scoop chillded dough. The cover on it doesn’t come close to the tops of the cookies and keeps the dough from drying out. Plus, it’s better for the environment!

These brown butter chocolate chip cookies are totally freezable. Either as dough or as a baked cookie. However, your dough chilling time still needs to come BEFORE you freeze. Let them rest in the fridge for at least 8 hours before freezing. You can bake them directly from frozen, but I prefer to let them come to chilled temp in the fridge overnight if you’re going to bake a whole frozen batch.

Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies Key Ingredients

• Bread Flour – Using about half bread flour of the total flour content doesn’t dramatically change the cookie but it adds a lot of chew. I love when a cookie has a dense chewy center and lightly crisp buttery edges. Personally I think it is the best texture for a CCC. You might not notice like wow these are so different but I do think you will notice how pleasant the texture is.
• Brown Butter – If you’ve had brown butter in anything, you know the incredible flavor it adds, so you know why we add it here. I use a blend of half browned butter and half regular unsalted, just because sometimes when you only use browned you can get a weird texture. This blend works very nicely though, retaining some of the moisture but still getting all the same flavor.
• Milk Chocolate AND Semi-Sweet – I wanted the chocolate to not be one note so we added both creamy and sweet milk chocolate with the richer/darker semi-sweet. You could also easily swap out the semi-sweet for something darker if that’s your preferred chocolate.