These are hands down the best Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies that everyone needs in their baking repertoire! Crispy and chewy, gooey and buttery, sweet but very well balanced with some sea salt on top. My favorite chocolate chip cookies!
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🌟 Why this is the best recipe
- Chewy texture - My recipe will guide you through on all the necessary steps to achieve that irresistible chewy texture on your brown butter cookies.
- Gooey and fudge center - Remember to watch your baking time and do not over-bake your cookies!
- Wonderful flavor- I mean brown butter, brown sugar, chocolate chips...I never compromise on taste!
- It's quick and easy! - Making brown butter is really must more hassle-free than you might think. My recipe is totally beginner-friendly, I promise
- It's a detailed tutorial! - While this recipe might seem long, all the information provided here is to help YOU achieve the best result!
📝 Ingredient notes
Gather these Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie ingredients and don't forget to measure them using a scale!
- Butter: Use always unsalted butter as you want to be in control of the quantity of the salt. I am using 82% fat content butter in all my recipes. Brown butter gives the most delicious deepness to the flavors, I highly recommend that you do not skip browning the butter!
- Sugar: For the best results I recommend using a combination of white and brown sugar (light brown sugar or dark brown sugar) in this chocolate chip cookie recipe. Their mixture contributes to both taste and texture.
- Vanilla extract: Avoid using artificial vanilla. There are several great brands for fine, pure vanilla, I use Nielsen massey which I love and really recommend
- Egg: Use room temperature as always
- Flour: I find the best cookie recipe needs a mixture of soft (pastry) and hard (bread) flour, they both offer different benefits in terms of texture, alternatively use All purpose flour
- Salt: An essential ingredient in most dessert recipes. Balances flavor and enhances other ingredients
- Baking soda: Makes cookies slightly risen, tender and chewy
- Chocolate: Use high cocoa content, high-quality chocolate which you would anyway enjoy eating on its own, and avoid using “baking chocolate”. I am using Valrhona or Callebaut in almost all my recipes, I found these are the most perfect chocolate chips. Please avoid using too sweat chocolate chips
🛒 You’ll find detailed measurements for all Ingredients in the printable version of the Recipe Card at the bottom of this post
👩🍳 How to make this recipe
1. How to make browned butter (buerre noisette)
Brown butter (beurre noisette) is a classic French one ingredient gold that will take your chocolate chip cookies to the next level! It has a deep nutty, complex flavor and really elevates butter to the next level. Use it for making medeleines, financiers (French teacakes), or even on savory dishes like on top of grilled salmon, gnocchi, etc.
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Making it is incredibly easy, takes 5 minutes!
- Heat butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Make sure the heat is not too much otherwise the butter will just burn quickly
- First butter should melt then it will foam
- Then, white bits (milk solids) will start to appear on the bottom of the pan
- The brown butter is ready when the white bits on the bottom of the pan will turn into golden brown and you will start to feel a lovely nutty smell
- Once your brown butter is ready, carefully pour it into a cold heatproof container so it will cool as soon as possible
💡 Top Tip: Make sure you carefully watch the butter throughout the process, stir it regularly, and remove it from the heat before it starts burning
2. Step-by-step process of making the cookies
Making this Browned Butter Chocolate Cookie recipe is extremely easy and quick but there are a couple of key steps you have to get right to achieve the right texture
- With an Electric hand mixer cream together room temperature (!) browned butter and brown sugar for a few minutes
- Whip in the egg, just until combined
- Sift the dry ingredients; the two different kinds of flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda together. Sifting is necessary to avoid lumps later
- Fold the flour mixture in with the help of a Rubber spatula just until combined. Make sure you fold it only until the mixture comes together, literally 30 seconds
- Finally, fold in chocolate chips. Leave some chocolate chips to place on top of the cookies just before baking
- Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and with the help of a Digital scale divide the cookie batter into 10 equal cookies and place them on parchment paper leaving enough space between them to spread. Do not soften the surface of the ball, in fact, try to keep it as rough as possible for a nice, crackly surface
- Press more chocolate chips on the surface of the cookie dough balls
- Now comes the chilling time. See details below
💡 Top Tip: Do not use a mixer while making cookies and do not over-mix the cookie butter. Over mixing ingredients would result in incorporating too much air and gluten into the mixture
3. Why chill cookie dough before baking
You will have to chill the cookie dough for at least 1 hour and the main reason behind it is to avoid over-spread, sad-looking, flat cookies. The warmer the dough the easier it will spread in the oven and our aim is to achieve thick, crackly surface, fudge cookies.
💡 Top Tip: If you don't have an hour to chill the dough in the fridge, try 15min in the freezer instead!
4. How to bake
First of all how not to bake chocolate chip cookies? Never bake them without chilling first.
There is one important trick to baking fudge chocolate cookies and it is not to overbake them. I know it is worrying to take them out when they look underbaked, but believe me, at the end of the baking time they won’t look done but they are, indeed. Let them rest on the parchment paper for a few minutes then carefully remove them to a Cooling rack.
If, for some reason, you forgot your cookies in the oven, check my how to fix burnt cookies guide.
💡 Top Tip: The cookies will be very fragile straight out of the oven so be careful while moving them.
🎓 Expert tips
- Brown butter will bring a delicious complex flavor profile, please do not skip it
- Use high-quality semi-sweet chocolate chips eg. Callebaut or Valrhona, that melt well and bring a deep cocoa taste, not just sweetness
- Either 1 hour in the fridge or 15 minutes in the freezer is sufficient enough to chill the cookie dough before baking so it won´t spread too much in the oven
- I get the best results when baking these cookies on parchment paper or a perforated baking mat. I find they might get wet from the bottom if baked on silicone mat
- At the end of the baking time, grab a cookie cutter and apply some circular movement around the cookies so they will become perfectly round
- Avoid over-mixing and over-baking your cookies as that would result in a crumbly texture
- Sea salt at the end of baking is a must to balance the flavor and offset the sweetness
❓Recipe FAQs
Yes, you can but why would you? Brown butter is a fundamental part of this recipe and brings wonderful flavor as well as texture
Yes, you can. I find high protein content flour adds extra chewiness to any cookies recipe, however, feel free to use all-purpose flour only
Yes, most probably you can, however, you can´t just replace flour with gluten free flour 1:1 without reformulating the recipe. When one ingredient changes, some other ingredients need to be changed too in order to keep the balance in the texture and flavor.
Probably you can, however just as making it gluten-free, you will need to adjust the ingredients somewhat if the egg is left out. Sadly, I am not able to provide substitutes for all sorts of allergies and diets
These cookies are best eaten fresh out of the oven, however, you can store them for 1-2 days at room temperature if stored in an airtight container. Warm them up in the microwave before serving
You can easily freeze the cookies either before baking (after you divided them into balls) or after baking
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Have you tried this recipe?
Please leave a 5-star ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating on the recipe card and consider leaving a comment as well! I would love to hear about how your dessert turned out and your feedback also helps other Readers!
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 140 g (⅔ cups) Unsalted butter that will make 125g browned butter
- 75 g (⅓ cups) Brown sugar
- 75 g (⅓ cups) Granulated sugar
- 1 Egg
- 100 g (¾ cups) All purpose flour
- 100 g (¾ cups) Bread flour can be replaced with All purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 1 teaspoon Baking soda
- 200 g (1 cups) Semi sweet chocolate chips good quality eg. Valrhona or Callebaut
US customary cup measurement is an indicative figure only. Measure the ingredients with a digital scale by weight (gram). Baking is art but also science which requires precision and accuracy.
Instructions
- For the best results make 125 g brown butter using 140 g butter as per step 2. If want to skip this step, please jump onto step 3.
- Heat butter in a saucepan on medium heat, first it will melt then it will foam. It is ready when the white bits on the bottom of the pan will turn into golden brown and it has a nutty smell. Make sure you carefully watch it throughout the process, stir regularly and remove from the heat before it starts burning. Let it cool to room temperature before using it
- Mix in the egg, do not overmix or it will become rather like a cake, not cookie.
- Sift the two different kinds of flour, salt, and baking soda together then add the flour mixture into the dough, fold with Rubber spatula
- Before the flour mixture is fully combined into the dough add in the chocolate chunks
- Divide the dough into 10 equal balls (using a Digital scale is handy and place them on parchment paper leaving enough space between them to spread. Do not soften the surface of the ball, in fact, try to keep it as rough as possible for a nice, crackly surface. Let them rest in the fridge for an hour
- Pre-heat oven to 180 C / 356°F ( no fan)
- Remove the cookie dough from the fridge and bake the cookies for 15 minutes. The cookies might look under baked however they will set as they cool
- Sprinkle them with salt flakes to enhance the taste
- Store at room temperature
Jim
In the information section you discuss vanilla, however there is none in the actual recipe. Is this a mistake? Also, can you bake from frozen or do you recommend defrosting?
Kata
Vanilla is not a must ingredient, this cookie has other hero flavors like the brown sugar and brown butter but ofc feel free to add vanilla as well.
You can easily bake them frozen however might need to add a few more minutes of baking time.
Joakim
The browned butter made the difference!! Great flawless recipe.
Mo
I don’t understand your statement regarding using 120g of brown butter from the 140g of butter. Can you explain please?
Thank you for the recipe.
admin
The recipe requires 120g brown butter that you can make using 140g butter and cook it until it caramelizes. The butter volume (g) will be reduced during the caramelization process from 140g to about 120g. Hope this helps?
Aetam
Perfect recipe, thank you for so many baking tips!
Magda
Ow god! 5 stars!!!! Five!!!
Please if there’s a way to delete my post. I’ll redo it. Gosh, I’m so sorry. It was meant to be 5 stars!
admin
Thanks I deleted the previous one haha 🙂
Sobia Iqbal
I have tried a few brown butter cookie recipes and talked to a few people who have tried some too and every single one failed because the butter would make the cookies spread like crazy. I had my doubts with this recipe too but it...is perfect. I believe it's the bread flour and the reduced butter to flour ratio than other recipes. These are definitely a keeper ❤
Zoe
Omg I will have to try this one too! I tried one recipe and it came out terrible.
Husseina Taherali
Perfectly explained and every detail was provided. My cookies turned out perfect. Thank you ☺️
Roberta
It’s my first time baking cookies in my life and the recipe’s not kidding when it says the best. It’s so easy and foolproof if you follow the recipe carefully and it’s even better than most of the cookies I bought in store/bakeries.
Must try!
admin
What a compliment thanks so much!
Roberta
Hi! Can I freeze the cookie dough balls and put them in the oven just before serving? If so should I thaw them first or bake them longer from frozen?
Thanks!
admin
I would bake them frozen but probably they will need a few more minutes in the oven. If they don´t want to spread just tap the tray to the kitchen counter and it will help
Mae
One of the best chocolate chips ever , very moost and rich in taste. Great recipe thanks.
Chloe
The browned butter elevates the cookies, a great recipe that I’ll be using and exploring add-ins with!