Food Pusher: Browned Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Browned Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

I'd like to say I've finally found my ultimate favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, but I think I may have said something like that before...several times...so I'll just say this one is my current favorite. I took the other Levain Style Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe I have here and tweaked it to omit the need for self-rising flour (since I'd been mixing it up on the side anyway with ingredients that were duplicated in the recipe) and I've browned a quarter of the butter. And I've given up on bagged chocolate chips for the time being and am sticking with my favorite Dove Dark Chocolate. They're worth every penny and every minute of unwrapping and chopping them up.

So what we have here is a relatively dense, tender, soft, chewy, chocolatey, buttery, nutty chocolate chip cookie. If you eat them fresh, they're also melty with a crisp edge. Mmmm.

Browned Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Adapted from Cupcake Jemma's Recipe on Youtube

Ingredients:

230 g cold butter, divided
160 g granulated sugar
160 g brown sugar
450 g dark chocolate chunks (I used Dove Dark Chocolate)
200 g walnut pieces (optional)
430 g all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions:

(Scroll to the photos at the end to see what this unconventional process looks like.)
The night before you plan to mix up the dough, brown four tablespoons of the butter. Place in a glass container, and either refrigerate or allow to sit at room temperature.
Beat the eggs and vanilla together in a small-ish bowl and set aside.
Cut the cold butter into tablespoons sized chunks and then add that and the browned butter to the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix on low for about a minute, just to break up the butter--do not cream the butter.
Add the granulated and brown sugar to the butter and mix again on low/medium low until little nuggets of butter & sugar form--again, do not cream this mixture. (If you refrigerated the browned butter you may need to cut it into smaller pieces.)
Add the chocolate chunks and walnut pieces (if desired), and mix again just to incorporate the chocolate chunks and walnuts.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Stir with a whisk until completely mixed.
Add the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/chocolate/walnut mixture in the mixing bowl and mix on low until combined, about 30-45 seconds. It will still be dry and sandy looking.
Add the vanilla to the egg mixture and then add that to the mixture. Mix on low/medium low until dough starts to come together, taking care not to mix too long.
Using a large cookie scoop or a large spoon, make 60 gram gently formed balls of dough -- it's best if you don't pack the dough into a tight ball. Then flatten each ball into a disk that's about an inch thick.
Cover and freeze dough disks at least 90 minutes before baking.Preheat oven to 360 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place in the oven to get hot while the oven preheats.
When pan and oven are heated, remove the pan from the oven, place frozen dough disks on pan allowing a couple of inches between them.
Bake at 360 degrees for about 14-15 minutes, until puffed and starting to crack. Take care to not over-bake. Underbaked is better than over-baked.
Remove from oven and allow to cool on cookie sheet at least five minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely. Alternately, if you have a rimless baking sheet, you can slide the parchment with the baked cookie sheets onto a cooling rack to cool until ready to eat, about 5-10 minutes. This is what I try to do so the cookies will not continue to bake on the hot baking sheet.
Place unbaked dough disks in a zip top freezer bag and store in the freezer until you want more cookies.
Store baked and cooled cookies in an airtight container.
Heat cooled cookies in the microwave on high for 10 seconds if you want to melt the chocolate.