Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Brown butter chocolate chip cookie recipes can often skew fussy, requiring multiple steps and specialty ingredients (like fancy chocolate or sea salt) to make, but this recipe streamlines things and comes together in just one bowl without the need for an electric mixer. The star of the show, brown butter, lends a subtle toffee-like flavor that makes the cookies far more enticing than your everyday version. Brown sugar provides a bittersweet edge that enhances the brown butter flavor, and a touch of granulated sugar crisps up the cookies’s edges. Instead of chopped chocolate (the go-to for many more laborious recipes), this recipe uses semisweet chips to heighten the nostalgia and avoid the knife work. The resulting cookies are everything you love about classic chocolate chip cookies but with the added richness of brown butter.

Before you dive into this recipe, note that the dough must chill in the refrigerator for at least three hours before baking. But for those looking for more instant gratification, the dough can be transferred to a large resealable plastic bag, flattened, and chilled in an ice water bath for 20 minutes to speed up the process. This gives you just enough time to tidy up after making the dough and to prepare your baking sheets.