This recipe for brown butter chocolate chip cookies will ruin you for all other cookies. It comes from BA subscriber Kate Davis, a winner in our 2017 Readers’ Choice Week contest. Davis’s recipe produces cookies with crispy, lacy edges and gooey centers studded with lots of melty chocolate. Then there’s the kicker: crunchy bits of buttery toffee candy.
The key to the best chocolate chip cookies is in the details. Here, that means simmering melted butter until the milk solids turn golden brown and give off a nutty aroma. Don’t even think about straining out those brown bits: they’re imbued with toasty, rich flavor that will enhance the cookies’ caramel-like notes. Davis also opts for high-end bittersweet chocolate wafers—not chocolate chips, or even chocolate chunks—which melt into pools that defy logic, remaining molten days after baking. Last: Yes, it is important to bring the ingredients to room temperature before you start mixing. If you want chewy, perfect chocolate chip cookies, don’t skip it.
Letting the dough rest before shaping gives the chocolate-strewn brown-butter toffee cookies time to meld, hydrating the dough and marrying all the flavors. If you want to make them ahead, shape and then freeze the cookie dough balls in a single layer on a cookie sheet. When frozen, transfer them to a Zip Top bag or other airtight container for up to three months.