Brown Butter Double Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookie

Holy moley.

Hi, I'm Catherine and I'll be your server tonight.
Would you like a cookie with your cookie?

Yes please!

No problem, I'll have that for you straightaway.

So, I usually shy away from recipes like this...cakes with filling, frosting, garnishes, pastry bag involvement (that's the worst part!!), etc. It seems like so much work because there are too many parts, too many bowls to deal with, blah blah blah.

This cookie is not one of those recipes. You make the butter/sugar/egg/vanila mixture, split it in half, add some of the flour mixture to one of the bowls, add some cocoa to the other half of the flour mixture and add that to the other egg/butter/sugar mixture, and add chocolate chips to both.

You bake both trays at the same time.

One batch. Two bowls. Okay, maybe three. It depends on how vigilant you are. Easy as cookies.

Whenever I see the word vigilant, I always say villigant in my head. Like militant and vigil flipped around and mushed together.
...that's a stretch.

And the brown butter. Ooh. la. la. It's the kind of thing I would make just to smell. It's not that scary, and you can go slow (much less scary than caramel!). Basically you're caramelizing the milk solids in the butter.

I think I might have over-browned my butter, because the cookies were a little gritty. In any case, I've also reduced the baking time in this recipe to help them keep a bit of chew, and though Jessica swears you must let the browned butter cool to room temp, I think it would help the grittiness to dissolve the sugars in the butter when it's still warm (but not hot) , so that's reflected in the recipe as well.

Get into your kitchen and get baking! Easy not hard.

Brown Butter Double Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookie
Yield: 24 cookies

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 pinches salt
1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) of unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg + 1 egg yolk, at room temperature (let the eggs sit in a bowl of warm water for about 5 minutes to take the chill off)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Heat a saucepan over medium-low heat and add butter. Whisk constantly until brown bits appear on the bottom (about 10 minutes, but take visual cues over time cues), then remove and let cool until warm. Add butter to a large bowl with sugars and whisk until completely smooth. Add in egg and egg yolk, whisking until combined, then add in vanilla.
3. Separate the dough into two doughs: Place an empty bowl on a kitchen scale measuring in grams, then pour the sugar mixture into the bowl, scraping all of it out. Note the weight in grams. Remove the full bowl from the scale, and place the bowl that previously held the butter/sugar mixture on the scale (taring it to 0). Add half of the butter/sugar mixture into the bowl – so each bowl has an equal amount of dough.
4. Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt to combine in another bowl.
5. In one of the dough bowls, add in a cup of the flour mixture, fold to combine, then fold in half of the chocolate chips. Set aside.
6. Add the cocoa powder to remaining flour mixture. Add it to the second dough bowl, mixing until a dough forms. Fold in the rest of the chocolate chips.
7. Roll each dough into 12 balls (about an inch thick) so you end up with 24. As demonstrated here, pull each ball apart. Take one chocolate chip half and one double fudge half, placing the round ends together with the rough edges out. Place dough rough-side down on a non-stick baking sheet about 1 1/2-2 inches apart.
8. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until cookies are soft in the middle and golden on the edges. Let cool completely.

Note: usually it works really well to reduce the oven temp by 25 degrees and bake on convection for the same amount of time. With these cookies, it meant the tops fell off the bottoms on a few of the cookies. They still tasted delicious, but might have stayed together better had I not put them in front of a fan spewing hot air.

Recipe from How Sweet It Is.