We’re bringing to you these deliciously gourmet brown butter cookies in a kit (available to order from the My Food Bag Kitchen), easy enough to make at home but with the flavours of a professional bakery! We want your cookies to be an absolute success, so our Queen of Sweets and Development Kitchen Manager Jessie Juneberry, is here to tell us a bit about how these cookies were created and how you can achieve the picture-perfect cookie at home.
These brown butter cookies were truly a labour of love, I cannot tell you the amount of times I made them, tweaking ingredients, techniques and cook times until I got it right. I realised later that it’s because cookies are SO personal. Everyone has their preference and so, it’s going to be impossible to create one that is perfect in everyone’s eyes, however I think I’ve come pretty close 😉 There’s a few techniques that are key to follow in order to get it right, particularly the brown butter and making sure that cools down properly – I’m excited to see everyone give these a go!
Step 1 – Browning Butter
Brown butter can be a tricky technique, as the recipe states, this can take up to 10+ minutes. You will see the butter become very foamy and then it will settle and turn quite a golden brown, this is what we’re aiming for. Keep an eye on it while cooking as it can change very quickly and after all, we are not trying to achieve a black burned butter! If you do in fact burn your butter, do not use it because the cookies will be bitter and well, not very nice! Make sure you let your butter cool down before carrying on.
Step 2 – Mixing Batter
We tested this recipe hundreds of times and this technique is what created the perfect cookie. Combine the sugar and cooled browned butter then add the egg and egg yolk (if you accidentally add both whole eggs, don’t worry it will still work just fine, we know because we did it too 😂 ). Add the flour mix and combine. Make sure the mixture is cool enough (it should be if you allowed your butter to cool) before adding chocolate chunks, otherwise they will melt into the mixture.
Step 3 – Preparing to Bake
These brown butter cookies come out great if you use a tablespoon to measure the dough and dollop onto a lined oven tray, you don’t need to roll them at all. Make sure to leave enough space in between each one as they will spread quite a lot.
Step 4 – Baking
Everyone has an opinion on how chewy or crispy a cookie should be and everyone’s oven is different. 10 minutes in my oven could be vastly different to 10 minutes in your oven, so I always suggest doing a test cookie – that is, bake one cookie on its own for 10 minutes and remove from oven. See how chewy it is, how crispy and decide on if you want to reduce the time by 1-2 minutes, or increase the time. You can see in our video here that more time in the oven, means crispier!
Step 5 – Perfecting
This step isn’t really necessary, but a tip for getting your cookies picture perfect. As soon as your cookies come out of the oven (and I mean literally as soon as they come out as they need to be piping hot for it to work) use a cookie cutter slightly bigger than your cookie to shape it into the perfect circle (see the video for demonstration).
For experts
I always sprinkle my cookies with flaky sea salt, it is a gourmet touch and makes the flavour heavenly. While this isn’t for everyone, I dare you to give it a try, you probably won’t be able to cope without it from now on!
