Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies from Stephanie's Sweet Treats

Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies - made dough August 4, 2024 from Stephanie's Sweet Treats

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs, room temperature

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 3/4 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1/4 cup mini chocolate chips

1. Melt and brown the butter (see original blog post for more detailed directions). Pour browned butter (make sure you get all the browned bits) into the mixing bowl you plan to use, let cool to room temperature then cover and chill until solid.
2. Before making the cookie dough, remove from refrigerator and let come to room temperature.
3. In a separate medium bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, salt and cornstarch.
4. In the mixing bowl with the now-solidified brown butter, beat together browned butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes.
5. Add vanilla extract and eggs, one at a time, mixing to combine after each addition.
6. Add flour mixture in 2 additions, mixing on low speed after each addition until just combined.
7. Add chocolate chips and mix on low speed until evenly disbursed. Do not overmix.
8. Portion dough into golf ball size dough balls, cover and chill for at least 30 minutes or several hours or overnight.
9. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and evenly space dough balls. Bake 13-15 minutes or until edges are set and middles no longer look raw. Remove from oven and let rest on baking sheets for several minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.

In my volunteer work with Soldiers Angels, the volunteers select a service member who'd signed up for baking care packages. Oftentimes you only get the bare bones info on them like military mailing address to send the package to and what branch of the military they're in. But I came across one service member who requested "brown butter chocolate chunk cookies". Ah, an appeal to my baking heart.

As it happened, I had a couple of recipes for exactly that on my pinterest board, just lurking to be tested. Unlike some recipes calling for the use of browned butter in chocolate chip cookies where you melt and brown the butter, let it cool then start making the dough with the melted browned butter, this one calls for chilling the browned butter back to solid form before using. This prevents having flat, greasy cookies which is prone to happen with using directly melted butter.

The original directions call for pouring the melted browned butter into a large cup and chilling. Then transferring the chilled browned butter to the mixing bowl when you're ready to make the dough. I skipped the cup step and poured the melted browned butter into the mixing bowl I planned to use. The best part of browned butter are the browned bits from the milk solids. It's hard to scrape every last browned bit if you keep transferring containers. So I found it easier and more efficient to pour the melted browned butter directly into my mixing bowl, cover, and chill that then plug it right into my stand mixer to start making the dough. 

As predicted, these cookies didn't come out flat or greasy. They baked to a fairly uniform thickness, had the crisp edges and the chewy middles. Best of all, they had the browned butter flavor. Hopefully the military service member I sent these to got what she expected and requested.