Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Chocolate chip cookies are already hard to beat, but browning the butter first makes them so much better. And trust me, once you try it this way, you will never want another type of cookie.

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These cookies are rich and buttery with crisp golden edges, soft chewy centers, and big pools of milk (or dark) chocolate chips throughout. Browning the butter gives them a warm, nutty, almost caramel-like flavor, while a little flaky sea salt on top balances everything out.

I also like using chopped chocolate bars instead of regular chocolate chips, but use whatever you have on hand – trust me, it’ll still work. I chop about half of the chocolate into big chunks and the other half quite small. The big pieces turn into those glorious melted chocolate pockets, while the tiny pieces scatter throughout the dough so you get chocolate in basically every bite.

They’re a little more effort than your standard chocolate chip cookie – but only a little. And they’re absolutely worth it. Without any overnight chilling or huge wait.

Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Ingredients

• ¾ cup + 2 tablespoons (196 g) salted butter
  If using unsalted butter, add ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1½ cups (219 g) all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ¾ cup (165 g) brown sugar
• ¼ cup (50 g) granulated white sugar
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
• 1 tablespoon (15 ml) vanilla extract
• 7 oz (198 g) dark chocolate bars, chopped
• Flaky sea salt, for topping

Brown the Butter

Add the butter to a saucepan over medium heat and allow it to melt.

Continue cooking, stirring or swirling frequently. The butter will begin to bubble and foam as the water cooks off. Keep watching it closely – eventually you’ll notice little golden-brown specks forming at the bottom of the pan.

Once the butter smells nutty and toasted and those milk solids have turned a deep golden brown, remove it from the heat. It will almost have a pale peanut butter look to the foam.

Make sure you keep all of those little brown bits. That’s where so much of the flavor is!

Take the butter off the heat and pour it into a smaller, heat-safe bowl. Now, you can simply leave it to cool on its own (I warn you, that would take a while), but this is where I use a little hack to speed things up.

Speed Chill the Butter

Fill a large bowl with ice and cold water, then carefully set the smaller bowl of hot brown butter into the ice bath. Make sure the water doesn’t come up high enough to splash into the butter.

Gently whisk the butter as it cools for about 10 minutes, or until it has cooled down and started to thicken slightly. It should resemble room-temperature, very softened butter in consistency.

This gets the butter ready for your cookie dough much faster – because waiting around for butter to cool is probably the hardest part of making these cookies.

Make the Cookie Dough

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and baking soda. If you’re using unsalted butter, add the ¼ teaspoon of salt here as well.

Add the brown sugar and granulated sugar to the cooled brown butter and mix until well combined. It should look fluffy but not the same as regular butter + sugar – it will have more texture.

Add the egg, egg yolk and vanilla, mixing until the batter gets a bit paler.

Add the dry ingredients and gently mix just until a dough forms. Try not to over-mix.

This is an important bit – if you like your cookies to spread a bit more – use exactly the amount of flour I have listed, otherwise add 1/4 cup more for a more firmed up cookie.

Now for the important part: the chocolate.

Roughly chop your dark or milk chocolate bars (I prefer milk). I like to leave about half in fairly large chunks and chop the other half into much smaller pieces. This gives the cookies a mixture of big pools of melted chocolate and tiny bits running throughout the dough.

Fold the chocolate into the cookie dough, reserving a little for the tops.

Chill the Dough

Scoop the somewhat sticky dough into balls and arrange them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, leaving plenty of room between each cookie.

Press a few extra pieces of chopped chocolate into the tops and refrigerate before baking – 20 mins is enough, but I often push to 30.

Chilling gives the dough time to firm up and helps prevent the cookies from spreading too quickly in the oven. It also gives all of those brown butter, vanilla and chocolate flavors a little time to get to know each other.

Bake

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Bake until the edges are golden and set but the centers still look slightly soft. Don’t wait for the entire cookie to look completely baked — they’ll continue to set as they cool.

As soon as they come out of the oven, sprinkle the tops with a little flaky sea salt.

Let them cool on the baking sheet for several minutes before moving them to a cooling rack.

Why the Extra Egg Yolk?

The extra yolk is one of my favorite parts of this recipe. It adds richness without adding another whole egg’s worth of liquid, helping give the cookies that dense, soft and chewy center.

Combined with the brown butter and brown sugar, you end up with a cookie that’s much richer than a basic chocolate chip cookie and has phenomenal CHEW.

Don’t Skip the Flaky Salt

Technically, you could.

But don’t.

The tiny hit of salt on top is especially good with dark chocolate. It balances the sweetness and brings out that deep, toasted brown butter flavor. I absolutely love Maldon salt – you can get it on Amazon in bulk!

And if you put a few extra chunks of chocolate on top while you’re at it, the cookies look pretty great too.

A Few Tips

Watch your butter closely. Once it begins browning, it can go from perfectly toasted to burnt surprisingly quickly.

Weigh your flour if you can. Too much flour can completely change the texture of a cookie. If you’re measuring by cups, spoon the flour into your measuring cup and level it rather than scooping directly from the bag.

Use chocolate you actually like eating. Since there’s a lot of chocolate in these cookies, you’ll taste the difference.

Mix up your chocolate sizes. Big chunks = melty chocolate pools. Tiny chunks = chocolate distributed throughout the entire cookie. You want both.

Pull them out while the centers are still soft. A slightly underdone-looking cookie straight from the oven usually becomes a perfectly chewy cookie once cooled.

The Best Brown Butter Chocolate Cookies

The combination of toasted brown butter, brown sugar, plenty of vanilla, dark chocolate and flaky sea salt makes these dangerously easy to eat while they’re still warm.

The edges get golden and slightly crisp, the centers stay rich and chewy, and there are melted pockets of chocolate everywhere.

Just give them a few minutes to cool before eating one.

Or don’t. I certainly can’t judge.