Forget this guide because their control recipe is less than perfect. This recipe is perfect. Fight me. I didn’t perfect it, America’s Test Kitchen did. Kudos to them.
I call this recipe perfect, not only because it makes the exact kind of cookie I crave, but because it can go from stored ingredients to finished cookie in the time it takes to prepare (without the hassle of softening butter) and it will make your house smell heavenly the entire time.
Buy good (and fresh) ingredients, you can’t make perfect cookies with rubbish ingredients.
Perfect Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
INGREDIENTS
1-3/4 cups (210g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 (3g) teaspoon baking soda
14 tablespoons (197g) unsalted butter
1/2 cup (99g) granulated sugar
3/4 cups (160g) packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon (9g) table salt
2 teaspoons (11.2g) vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1-1/4 cups (296mL) semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup (177mL) chopped pecans or chopped toasted walnuts (optional)
PREPARATION Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 large (18- by 12-inch) baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.
Heat 10 tablespoons (140g) butter in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes. Continue cooking, swirling pan constantly until butter is dark golden brown and has nutty aroma, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove skillet from heat and, using heatproof spatula, transfer browned butter to large heatproof bowl.
Stir remaining 4 tablespoons butter into hot butter until completely melted. Add both sugars, salt, and vanilla to bowl with butter and whisk until fully incorporated. Add egg and yolk and whisk until mixture is smooth with no sugar lumps remaining, about 30 seconds. Let mixture stand 3 minutes, then whisk for 30 seconds. Repeat process of resting and whisking 2 more times until mixture is thick, smooth, and shiny. Using rubber spatula or wooden spoon, stir in flour mixture until just combined, about 1 minute. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts (if using), giving dough final stir to ensure no flour pockets remain.
Divide dough into 16 portions, each about 3 tablespoons (or use #24 cookie scoop). Arrange 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets, 8 dough balls per sheet. (Smaller baking sheets can be used, but will require 3 batches.)
Bake cookies 1 tray at a time until cookies the edges have begun to set but centers are still soft, 10 to 14 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking.
Transfer baking sheet to wire rack; cool cookies completely before serving.
Give these cookies away. Seriously, they are too delicious. Your waistline and your neighbors will thank you. Just don’t give any cookies to the ignorant fucks whining about units. They got the conversion all wrong anyway.
Edit: I am actually not sure about the amount of butter. Another table I found would give the amount as about 400g, which is insane. That would make this just butter with sugar and some stuff to keep it all together. But on the other hand that does sound very American.
The recipe translated for the mentally sane:
Perfect Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
INGREDIENTS
<span style="color:#323232;">~150g unbleached all-purpose flour
</span><span style="color:#323232;">1/2 teaspoon baking soda
</span><span style="color:#323232;">200g unsalted butter
</span><span style="color:#323232;">100g granulated sugar
</span><span style="color:#323232;">150g packed dark brown sugar
</span><span style="color:#323232;">1 teaspoon table salt
</span><span style="color:#323232;">2 teaspoons vanilla extract
</span><span style="color:#323232;">1 large egg
</span><span style="color:#323232;">1 large egg yolk
</span><span style="color:#323232;">100g semisweet chocolate chips
</span><span style="color:#323232;">100g chopped pecans or chopped toasted walnuts (optional)
</span>
PREPARATION Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 190 degrees. Line 2 large (30-45cm) baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.
Heat 150g butter in 25cm skillet over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes. Continue cooking, swirling pan constantly until butter is dark golden brown and has nutty aroma, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove skillet from heat and, using heatproof spatula, transfer browned butter to large heatproof bowl.
Stir remaining 50g butter into hot butter until completely melted. Add both sugars, salt, and vanilla to bowl with butter and whisk until fully incorporated. Add egg and yolk and whisk until mixture is smooth with no sugar lumps remaining, about 30 seconds. Let mixture stand 3 minutes, then whisk for 30 seconds. Repeat process of resting and whisking 2 more times until mixture is thick, smooth, and shiny. Using rubber spatula or wooden spoon, stir in flour mixture until just combined, about 1 minute. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts (if using), giving dough final stir to ensure no flour pockets remain.
Divide dough into 16 portions, each about 3 tablespoons (or use #24 cookie scoop). Arrange 5cm apart on prepared baking sheets, 8 dough balls per sheet. (Smaller baking sheets can be used, but will require 3 batches.)
Bake cookies 1 tray at a time until cookies the edges have begun to set but centers are still soft, 10 to 14 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking.
Transfer baking sheet to wire rack; cool cookies completely before serving.
One cup of flour weighs less than one cup of sugar and different kinds of sugar also have different mass. And I rounded up or down to be in line with usual recipe amounts. But what I saw from the ranges given by helpful people here and what I found online, these vague recipes can fuck a rake. A fucking tablespoon of butter alone can be anything from 10 to 40 gram. With 14 tablespoons that gives you a range from 140g to 560g. That’s insanity.
That’s why it’s just easier to work in the original units of the recipe instead of needlessly converting it for nor real benefit. We’re making a single batch of cookies, not bread for an army or drugs; SI units and excessive precision just don’t matter that much. The recipe isn’t vague, just your understanding. A tablespoon isn’t a vague measurement, you’re just trying to adapt it to a needlessly precise unit of measure and forgetting everything your maths and sciense teachers should have taught you about significant digits.
A tablespoon as measurement for a non-fluid is extremely vague. How much mass do you pile onto it? There’s an extremely wide range of possibilities.
Also, this entire discussion under a post about how much different amounts of ingredients affect the outcome is just rich. Your recipe could be all of the examples in OP’s picture, depending on how people interpret it. If you treat baking recipes as art, sure, your recipe is great. If you want reproducible outcomes across different people it’s useless.
I hear that people like US recipes because they don’t use exact metrics and instead use spoons and cups and those are supposedly easier to scale. In baking I absolutely hate that. Give me metric units. I have no problems scaling those up or down as required. What’s a cup? I have .2 liter cups and .4 liter. How the fuck is that supposed to be easier? And what’s up with tablespoons of butter? Depending on how much you put on a spoon that can easily mean double/half as much butter. With grams and liters there is no doubt and no second-guessing.
A cup in US Customary is 237 ml (often rounded to 240 ml). Americans don’t exist in a world where they have to play “is this cup US Customary or different measure also calling itself a cup measure?” as all their measuring cups are going to be in US Customary. Butter usually comes in quarter pound sticks with teaspoon (4.9 ml) and tablespoon (14.8 ml) measures printed on the wrapper so you can just cut a hunk of the appropriate volume from the stick and if you were using a measuring spoon to measure butter you’d use a level measure to create consistency and not just let it heap up.
Note: I prefer weighing ingredients and in metric at that. I’m just answering your questions.
Weighing ingredients is so much better. I can cook significantly faster when I don’t have to measure volumetrically, plus recipes scale so much more easily. If I want to make 3.134 of a recipe, weight is the way to go.
Oh, I agree. If I use a recipe regularly I’ll often convert it or if I’m creating one from scratch I’ll usually just have everything by weight from get go.
P.S. Nothing makes me annoyed at a recipe faster than seeing something like 2.5 cups of chopped broccoli.
This is very close to the “perfect” recipe I use from Tasty. But they add in a little bit of espresso powder. It’s not enough to make the cookies taste like coffee, but it does make the chocolate flavor more intense. I really like this recipe, but now I want to try the ATK recipe and see which one is better because I swear by the Tasty recipe ever since I found it. Here it is if anyone’s curious: tasty.co/…/tasty-101-ultimate-brown-butter-chocol…
In a world with transporter technology wouldn’t it be considered weird not being able to do that?
They also have anti-gravity sleds, there’s probably a planet somewhere with bioluminescent flying reindeer, the only truly unbelievable thing about the whole story is they’ve got a guy wearing a red suit and he doesn’t die.
Let’s be real, he ain’t visiting most of the houses. China and India, Indonesia, Pakistan, are mostly non-Christian, and then there’s a lot of poor people that Santa seems to skip over most years.
I mean, I interpreted the statement as “this is something that happened” i.e. he’s aware that it’s a belief from the past, where transporter technology didn’t exist yet. I can’t believe the Santa tradition actually survives into an age where materialism is mostly eradicated.
But yeah also, the Santa thing contains that Santa actually physically delivers the presents himself, which, even with their current technology, is impossible. You’d need time travel for that.
Sounds like an average Tuesday for Chief O’Brien to me… but apparently there’s a TNG comic confirming Santa is real (and also the Grinch for some reason??)
You’re absolutely correct, Garek, it’s a truly absurd fairy tale, by any measure. On a completely unrelated subject, may I introduce you to your lord and savior Jesus Christ?
15% more flour makes it stronger, refrigerating overnight fully hydrates the flour and prevents excessive spreading of melting butter, and all brown sugar brings flavor, and I suspect the extra flour would combat its tendency to get runny.
I just did a two-shot where we went five level 20 characters vs 5 Ancient Dragons. Beyond all expectations the players actually won without a Permadeath. That said, the GM didn't use the Dragons' spell abilities much, that might have turned the tide.
Worth noting that it was the fact we had two Druids with Shapechange that turned the tide of battle.
First Druid Shapeshifted to Ogremoch soaking damage and myself as the second Druid Shapeshifted to Pit Fiend multi-striking with poison helped to finish the fight, our Cleric was putting out some serious dps with Smites though he went down and had to be revived twice, a sorcerer with Invulnerability potion successfully splitting off two of the Dragons with Agro and doing some strong AOE until the Pit Fiend came in to finish them off. I was the Pit Fiend Druid, Dream Circle, focusing healing after summoning a Draconic Spirit to soak damage early on until the Shapeshift towards the end. Wizard in the backline focusing Lightning damage with hasten, but the Blue Dragon being immune he switched it up towards the end.
Damn, that sounds like one long epic fight! Thanks for the rundown. That was an interesting read. I love getting a look into how different people problem-solve stuff like that.
As a bit more background the Ancient Dragons were Blue, Black, Red, Green, and White, so we had to work around a mix of damages. Nice bonus with the Pit Fiend, Dragons aren't immune to the Frightened Condition and creatures within 20 feet of the Fiend roll for Frightened at start of turn, and all attacks are magical so it punches through resistances.
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