Salty Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
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“What I know about living is that the pain is never just ours. Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo, so I keep listening for the moment the grief becomes a window, when I can see what I couldn’t see before.”
- Andrea Gibson
Before I wax poetic about cookies, I just want to say: Hey. I see you. I know the grief and heartbreak oozing from the dehumanizing reality we’re met with in headlines and social media is thick enough to choke on. I know it feels impossible. I know our heads and hearts and bones are screaming “IT’S TOO MUCH! IT’S TOO MUCH! IT’S TOO MUCH!” so loudly we’re growing hoarse. So loudly we’re growing deaf. So loudly we’re growing numb. I don’t have answers or solutions, but I know for certain that the most dangerous thing we can do is allow ourselves to lose our voice and capacity to hear, to surrender to the desensitization of our feelings in a desperate attempt to cope.
We aren’t made to feel the weight of this kind of anguish, but it is imperative that we learn how to carry it because looking away from someone else’s suffering comes at the steep cost of our own humanity. So take care of yourself, claim moments of rest and joy where you can so you can find the grit necessary to keep showing up in a world that is too much.
I never thought I would develop and share a chocolate chip cookie recipe, but here we are. I have nothing against chocolate chip cookies, I just don’t make dessert often because I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. Plus, there are SO MANY chocolate chip cookie recipes online, why add to the noise?
While I may be more of a savory girlie, my partner is an unapologetic sugar addict. He wants a treat every damn day. A couple months ago, he was whining about needing something sweet (insert my eye roll here) but neither of us wanted to leave the comfort of our home, so I rifled through what I had in the pantry. Lo and behold, miracle of miracles: I had all the ingredients necessary to make chocolate chip cookies.
I already knew I wanted to do a brown butter based dough - I’m nothing if not consistent in my brown butter loyalty. For me, the best part of a chocolate chip cookie is the dough, not the chocolate. It’s not that I’m anti-chocolate, it’s just so incredibly rich and decadent and for someone that isn’t a dessert person, it can become overwhelming on the palette.
The two things I wanted to achieve in my cookie quest was to be able to really taste the roasty toasty deliciousness of the brown butter (a flavor profile that can be easily lost when using it baked goods if the other ingredients are overpowering *cough* chocolate *cough*) anddddd I wanted to sink my teeth into a cookie that had a perfectly chewy center.
Brown butter chocolate chip cookies are not a new invention. There are plenty of pre-existing recipes to be found on the world wide web, and so I skimmed through a few to try. The first batch turned out pretty good, but they didn’t always stay chewy after they cooled and I wanted to ramp up the aforementioned “roasty toasty deliciousness” quality I had my heart set upon.
Samuel (the sugar addict I share my life with) started requesting more cookies after the first batch were gobbled up. If I was going to start keeping him stocked in homemade sweets, I was going to take the time to figure out how to adjust the recipe to produce the results my fickle taste buds sought.
I shared about my chocolate chip cookie adventures on Insta stories, and was moderately surprised to get multiple recipe requests lining up in my DMs. It’s not uncommon for people to ask me for recipes if I share something in my stories, but I just assumed everyone must already have their own go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe in their back pocket because it’s one of those commonplace treats we all grew up with. But it sounds like there’s a handful of people, like me, that just hadn’t found the chocolate chip cookie that fit them best.
I don’t know if my recipe will be “the one” for you, but I am happy to report that it is *my* perfect chocolate chip cookie. There was a lot of trial and error and research, and I finally got the CCC of my dreams. It is “roasty toasty” to the max, it has a rich chewy center with an integrity that withstands several days in an airtight container, the perfect balance of chocolate to satisfy chocolate lovers AND the chocolate conservatives (like myself), and it’s just salty enough to make all the flavors come alive and keep the sugar from steamrolling sensitive taste buds.
This is a funny little full circle moment for me. Chocolate chip cookies were the first thing I learned how to make in the kitchen when I was 8 years old. My mother isn’t much of a dessert person either, and I’m pretty sure the recipe we used then was the one from the back of the Nestle bag. They were fine, but despite the nostalgia, they weren’t special enough to cling to over the years. Then, when I was a teenager, I started to learn how to cook other food, so baking chocolate chip cookies became a forgotten pastime. And now, 25 years after my culinary baptism of chocolate-chip-cookie-making, I am sharing my own revision of this popular A-list dessert.
The holy trinity of these cookies: cornstarch, toasted sesame oil, and 3 eggs. Cornstarch helps maintain a soft center and prevents the dough for overspreading while it bakes - which ultimately adds to the chewy component. Using 1 whole egg and 2 yolks is another important element of ensuring chewy perfection. While the egg white is protein and a binding agent, the yolk is high fat - so adding a couple extra yolks makes the flavor of the cookie more lush and keeps the texture moist and - of course - chewy. The toasted sesame oil is the secret to really making the “roasty toasty” brown butter flavor pop!
One of the unsung “chewy” heroes not featured with the trinity: dark brown sugar. Similar to the yolks, when you use more brown sugar than granulated sugar, it helps lock in moisture and an elevated richness in the crumb.
Salty Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup (2 sticks) + 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
- 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt (1 teaspoon if using sea salt)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 1/2 cups dark brown sugar, packed
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg + 2 egg yolks, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste (or pure vanilla extract)
- 8 ounces semi-sweet or 60-70% dark baking chocolate, chopped (can also use chocolate chips instead)
- flaky sea salt
Instructions
- Heat butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Whisk occasionally for a couple minutes. Once milk solids separate and the butter begins to foam, begin whisking frequently to ensure the butter browns evenly. Once butter is a deep golden color on the bottom of the pan, immediately remove from heat and pour into a bowl to prevent it from cooking further.
- Add tablespoon of sesame oil to the bowl of melted butter, and allow it cool for several minutes, until it is just warm and no longer hot to touch.
- While butter cools, mix flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking soda together in a medium bowl and set aside.
- Transfer the slightly cooled butter and sesame oil combo to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, and add in both brown and granulated sugar. Beat on a medium speed for 1 to 2 minutes, or until sugar and fats are fully incorporated.
- Add in egg and yolks and increase speed of mixer to medium high. Beat for a couple minutes, or until the color lights and consistency thickens.
- Scrap the sides and then add in the vanilla and beat on medium high for another minute.
- Turn mixer speed down to low and add in the bowl of dry ingredients (flour mixture) and beat only until just combined - you don't want to overwork the gluten and hurt texture of your cookies.
- Then add in the chopped chocolate, and just pulse the mixer a few times to evenly disperse OR remove bowl from stand and fold in the chocolate with the spatula or spoon you used to scrape the sides. I usually do a hybrid of barely pulse mixer and then a couple folds with spatula.
- Cover bowl with plastic wrap and place in refrigerator to rest for at least an hour or up to overnight. This allows the flour to fully hydrate, and gives the gluten needed time to relax so you can ensure excellent texture and shape when baking.
- When ready to bake, place rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F and line a full size baking sheet with parchment paper. Using 1 ounce scoop, line balls of dough on baking sheet (a full size baking sheet should comfortably fit 12 balls of dough). Very gently press the tops of the dough with a couple fingers to create a subtle surface area, and add a pinch of flaky sea salt on top.
- Bake cookies for 10 to 11 minutes in total cooking time. I like to employ the Sarah Kieffer "pan-banging" trick to get the crispy edges and chewy center: after baking for 7 minutes, remove pan from oven, slam once or twice on a heat-proof surface to deflate cookies, return to oven to finish baking for another 3 to 4 minutes and maybe give one more little slam if cookies puffed back up when you remove them from the oven. Allow cookies to rest on baking sheet for about a minute, then use a spatula to transfer to a cooling rack.
- Repeat with the remainder of the dough, allowing baking sheet to slightly cool between batches. Cookies will keep (and maintain chewy texture!) for several days if stored in an airtight container.
Notes
You don't *have* to use sesame oil if you don't have it or don't want to - but it really brings out the nutty toasty quality of the brown butter and improves the overall taste. If you don't have access to sesame oil, just substitute for another tablespoon of butter.
I know the "pan-banging" might be unusual, but Sarah Kieffer is a cookie genius and I recommend you trust her. If you forget to bang your cookies (lol, had to), you will still get a nice chewy chocolate chip cookie. It just might be softer and not get crispier edges. So you can play with it and see if you like to bang or not bang.
For cooking time: it can vary oven to oven! 10 to 11 minutes is my oven's sweet spot, but I trust you to alter that time if necessary. If you know your oven is a little flaky in temperature and can sometimes cook too fast or maybe it cooks too slow, keep that in mind for when you pull the cookies. If they stay in the oven too long they can lose the nice chewy center - they'll still taste great, but the texture will lean more crisp than chewy. So if your cookies aren't soft and chewy in the center after they cool, but firm and crisp instead, try pulling them out of the oven a minute or two earlier.
