The Zer0 Kitchen Desserts & Baking
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Written in cups and spoons the way it was handed down — switch the units to metric and every volume becomes the weight you should actually be measuring.
This is the recipe most people already have, written the way most people already have it: in cups. It is here to make a point about units. A cup of flour is anywhere from 120 to 145 grams depending on how you fill it, which is the single biggest reason the same cookie recipe behaves differently in two kitchens. Leave it in cups if that is how you cook — or press Metric and bake the version that repeats.
Ingredients
Dough
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The extra yolk is what makes these chewy rather than cakey.
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Diamond Crystal. Morton's is nearly twice as dense — use half as much, or set your own grams_per_cup in the front matter.
Mix in
Equipment
- Light-coloured skillet — you cannot see butter brown in a dark one
- Stand mixer or a bowl and a strong arm
- Two half-sheet pans and parchment
- Kitchen scale, if you switch this recipe to metric
Method
Brown the butter
Melt the butter in a light-coloured skillet over medium heat, swirling, until it foams, quiets down, and the milk solids at the bottom turn deep amber and smell like toffee. Scrape every bit into the mixing bowl, solids included, and let it cool until barely warm.
10 min
Cream
Beat in both sugars until glossy and thick, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, the extra yolk and the vanilla, and beat another minute — the batter should lighten in colour.
5 min
Combine
Whisk the flour, baking soda and salt together in a separate bowl, then fold into the wet mixture until barely combined. Fold in the chocolate. Stop while you can still see streaks of flour disappearing.
5 min
Chill
Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour, and up to three days. This is not optional: cold dough spreads less and tastes noticeably deeper.
1 hr
Bake
Scoop into balls about 2 tbsp each, spaced well apart on parchment. Bake until the edges are set and the centres still look underdone — they will finish on the sheet.
12 min375 °F (190 °C)
Finish
Rap the pan once on the counter as it comes out to give the cookies their ripples, scatter over the flaky salt, and cool on the pan for 5 minutes before moving them.
5 min
Ratio
Every weight below is a percentage of the flour. Rescale the recipe and the weights follow; the percentages are what stay true.
| Ingredient | Weight | % of flour |
|---|---|---|
| unsalted butter | 227.0 g | 80.7% |
| light brown sugar | 213.0 g | 75.7% |
| granulated sugar | 100.0 g | 35.5% |
| large eggs | — | — |
| egg yolks | — | — |
| vanilla extract | 8.7 g | 3.1% |
| all-purpose flour | 281.3 g | 100% |
| baking soda | 4.6 g | 1.6% |
| kosher salt | 3.0 g | 1.1% |
| semisweet chocolate chips | 255.0 g | 90.7% |
| flaky sea salt (optional) | — | — |
| Total weighed | 1092.6 g | 388.4% |
| Per cookie | 45.5 g | — |
Cook's notes
- Switch the units to Metric and the cup measures resolve to the weights a bakery would use — 227 g butter, 281 g flour. That conversion is driven by
_data/ingredient_densities.yml, so it is only as good as the density table; pin an exact value withgrams_per_cup:on any ingredient. - Scaling to 12 cookies halves an egg. Beat one egg, weigh it, and use half — or make the full batch and freeze half the dough in scooped balls.
- Underbaking is the whole technique. Pull them a minute before you think.
Nutrition
Per cookie, estimated.
- Calories
- 195 kcal
- Protein
- 2 g
- Carbohydrates
- 25 g
- Sugars
- 16 g
- Fat
- 10 g
- Saturated fat
- 6 g
- Sodium
- 125 mg