Brown Butter Steals The Show In This Cookie Recipe

If you haven’t been using brown butter in your baking, you’re missing out. Brown butter is exactly what it sounds like – butter that’s been melted and cooked until it becomes a brown-gold color. The usual butter flavor is replaced by a much deeper, fragrant, and almost caramel-like essence that upgrades a normal cookie. If you’ve never browned butter before, know that it will bubble a lot and you might see dark-colored milk solids in the bottom of the pan. That’s perfectly normal, and you should definitely put all of it in your dough.

 This oatmeal-chocolate chunk cookie with toffee bits is my favorite use for brown butter. The toffee and brown butter really compliment each other. I also like using larger chunks of dark chocolate to add complexity to the very sweet flavors. Biting into a melted chocolate puddle is never a bad thing, either. If you’re wondering why this recipe has oats, it’s because I like oats in my cookies, but also the dough tends to be a bit wet because of the silkier texture of the browned butter. The oats help keep the dough together and reduce spreading. Here’s the full recipe:

Ingredients:

1 cup softened butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 ½ teaspoon vanilla
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup toffee bits
1 ½ cups chopped dark chocolate

Instructions:

Chop the butter into chunks and put in a saucepan. Heat on medium until melted, then stir occasionally until butter has turned a deep amber color. It will have a sweet nutty fragrance. Put in the fridge to cool. If you want, you can leave the butter in the fridge overnight, so it solidifies all the way. When you’re ready to continue the recipe, mix the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, cream butter and brown sugar. Add in eggs and vanilla. Mix in the flour mixture. Fold in oats, toffee bits, and chopped chocolate. If the dough feels wet (which is likely if you didn’t use solidified butter), stick in the fridge for 30 minutes or so. Preheat the oven to 350-degrees.

Grease a cookie sheet. With clean hands, roll the cookie dough into balls and place a few inches apart on the sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes.