Saturday, March 7, 2009

Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies of Love

Chocolate chip cookies are a decidedly American treat and I wanted to make them for some of my friends here in Oslo. When living in the US, I took for granted the ease and convenience of high-quality chocolate in chip form. Not only did it come in chip form, but they came in large bags. Morever, these bags were reasonably priced! Some even came in bulk. Those days are no more for me. Now, I'm relegated to choosing from 2 low quality chocolate balls that come in tiny packages that will cost me around 12 USD (80 kroner) for each recipe. I love my friends and my chocolate chip cookies and I love them too much to pay that much for low grade chocolate balls. The next best thing? Hand chop the high quality chocolate chunks myself. If these cookies don't spell love, I don't know what does.

Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies
2 cups flour
1 cup of dark brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup of granulated sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups chocolate chunks (or chips if you are so lucky)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbs vanilla extract
2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F, 175 degrees C. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or lightly grease with a spray or butter.

In a large saute pan, brown the butter on medium-high heat. The butter will foam and then start to turn a caramel brown color. The butter makes a nutty and rich smell as it browns. Using a heat-safe spatula, scrape the bottom of the pan as the butter browns to ensure even browning. Brown the butter until it is a deep brown color, keeping very close eye on it to ensure it does not burn. Once browned, set the pan aside to cool completely.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl until very well combined. Set aside. Add the 2 types of sugar to a large bowl. Break up the brown sugar to remove lumps and whisk it with the white sugar to combine thoroughly. Add the brown butter to the sugar and beat using an electric mixer. Cream the butter and sugar together until well blended. To the butter and sugar mixture, add the 2 eggs and the vanilla and blend with the mixer until it is light and frothy. Add the flour and blend lightly with the mixer until the flour and wet mix is just combined.

Stir the chocolate chunks into the dough by hand using a wooden spoon, taking care to mix in any remaining flour.

Scoop tablespoon sized balls of dough onto the prepared cookie baking sheet for small cookies. I used a small ice cream scoop, one of my favorite things. For extra large cookies, spoon the dough by the quarter cup-full. Space the cookies about 3 inches apart for they will spread. Bake for 10-12 minutes but check the cookies at the 10 minute mark. The cookies will be a bit darker than your normal chocolate chip cookies on account of the dark brown sugar and the browned butter but look for a brown, crisp edge. Let the cookies cool on the sheet for about 5 minutes then remove it to a wire rack to cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

OR you could eat it still warm with a cup of milk.

3 comments:

  1. Ok, I'm about to try these! Will let you know how it goes.

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  2. Alright – they are in the oven. Slight modifications made to recipe out of laziness of going to store:

    -Used light brown sugar instead of dark. So my cookies are very light so far.
    -Used combo of salted and unsalted butter (I only had about ½ a stick of unsalted left). Because of this, went easy on the salt otherwise. Used about ¼ instead of ½ tsp.
    - Used milk chocolate chips (no chunks). Considered also using bittersweet chocolate but decided I could do that next time. Also only used about 1 ¼ cup chips... my mom insisted 1 ½ cup was too much though I tried to argue but lost that battle. I agree though from just looking at them, they could have used the extra ¼ cup. :)

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  3. oh man these are freaking good. that's all i have to say.

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