BROWN BUTTER CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE
(Makes 16-18 medium sized cookies)
180g brown butter (from about 215-220g butter)
30g butter
150g castor sugar
140g brown sugar
2 eggs (90-100g)
300g flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
300g roughly chopped chocolate (milk or dark)
Preheat your oven to 175C.
If you haven’t already, brown your butter (start with more than the required measure, I find about 210g butter browns to about 180g - but please weigh!). Place the butter in a wide bottomed pot and place over medium heat. You can leave it while it bubbles, giving it the odd stir, but when it starts to brown keep a close eye and stir well. It will foam up quite vigorously and be quite hard to tell the colour of the butter below the foam. A good indicator of when it is done will be the sound, to begin with it will be quite loud and splattery sounding, but when its close to being done, there won’t be much noise from the pan. Take it off heat and pour into a large bowl ontop of scales. You should have about 180g. Top this up with normal butter to 210g.
Add the sugars to the butter mixture. Mix to combine, it will look separated.
There are two routes you can take from here: you can leave the butter and sugar mixture to cool to room temperature or you can proceed with warm butter. If you proceed with warm butter, when you get to the stage when you add chocolate, it will melt through the batter and you will have a cookie with chocolate marbled throughout and more crinkly thin edges. If you leave the mixture to cool, when you add the chocolate it, it won’t melt through the batter and you will have more clearly defined chocolate spots and cookie spots. It’s really a preference thing!
Add in the egg and whisk, the mixture should now come together and look smooth.
Fold in all your dry ingredients until roughly 80% combined. Then add your chopped chocolate. Fold until just combined. Don’t overmix, as soon as all the flour is combined and the chocolate has been evenly distributed stop mixing.
Leave the mixture to sit at room temperature for 30 minutes before you bake. It will be quite loose when first mixed but firm up quite quickly. If the batter is firmer it holds its shape better when baking.
You can also scoop out the cookie dough and leave to chill in the fridge for up to 72 hours/3 days. A lot of pastry chefs swear by leaving the dough for at least 24 hours before baking so that the flavour develops. I personally don’t think it makes a huge difference, but the dough does store well and bakes very nicely from fridge cold, or even frozen. It’s nice to have a stash of cookie dough!
Scoop out your cookie dough to balls of about 60g, or a medium sized cookie scoop. Place on a baking tray lined with baking paper or a silpat with a good amount of space between the balls as they do spread, at least 10cm between each. You can sprinkle with a bit of maldon sea salt on top of each ball.
Bake for 12-15 minutes. Ovens do vary, so check after 6 minutes and rotate the tray around if you need to. They are ready when the outer edges are darker golden brown and the middles are golden.