These chunky shortbread cookies are packed with chopped chocolate and have a sprinkling of crunchy sea salt on top. The addition of the brown butter gives them a rich nutty and caramel depth that regular melted butter doesn’t but if you are short on time or intimidated by brown butter, melted butter will still yield a delightful cookie. Make sure to allow time to chill the cookie dough. I highly recommend making the cookie dough one day and then baking them off the next day for convenience and extra flavor. This recipe does require the use of two standard size muffin tins. If you only have one muffin tin, see my section above about how to bake them with one tin.
Course Dessert, Snack
Cuisine American
Keyword brown butter, chocolate, chocolate chip, cookies
Prep Time 15 minutesminutes
Cook Time 20 minutesminutes
Chilling Time 2 hourshours
Servings 24
Calories 153kcal
Author Irvin
Ingredients
Dough
1cupunsalted butter225 g or 2 sticks
1tablespoonvanilla extract
1/2cupwhite sugar100 g
1/2cuppowdered sugar, sifted60 g
1/2teaspoonkosher salt
2cupsall-purpose flour280 g
1 1/4cupschopped dark chocolate210 g (use something you like to eat out of hand)
To Bake
2tablespoonunsalted buttermelted
To finish
Crunch sea saltlike Maldon or Sel de Gris (optional but recommended)
Instructions
Start by first making browned butter. Place the butter in a large saucepan, preferably one with a light silver bottom. Heat the pan on high, stirring constantly, until most of the butter is melted, then reduce the heat on the pan to medium low. Continue to cook the butter, stirring constantly and scrapping down the sides of the pan, until the milk solids have turned golden brown. Remove from the pan and let it cool slightly, about 2 or 3 minutes.
Pour the browned butter into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Make sure to scrape in the browned butter milk fat bits at the bottom of the pan into the bowl as well. Add the vanilla, then the white sugar, powdered sugar, and salt into the bowl. Mix on low speed, increasing to medium for about a minute, or until the ingredients have had time to mix together. It won’t look blended, but don’t worry about that.
Add the flour and mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are absorbed. Then increase the speed to medium and mix for about a 1 to 2 minutes, or until the dough starts to look like small pebbles or large grain sand. Grab some dough and press it together with your fingers. If it sticks together, then the dough good. If it fall aparts, mix for another 30 to 60 seconds.Add the chopped chocolate and mix on slow speed, until it is evenly distributed.
Take 2 standard 12 cup muffin pans and brush the inside of each cup with some melted butter. Then scoop out a rounded tablespoon of dough from the bowl and smash it into the bottom of one of the buttered muffin cups. Press firmly to pack it in. If you have a scale and want to be precise, the dough should be somewhere between 30 to 35 grams. Repeat this process with the remaining dough, filling up both muffin pans, making 24 cookies.Place both pans in the refrigerator, and let chill in the fridge for a minimum of 2 hours, or overnight preferably. You can chill the cookies for up to 2 days if you wish.
Once the dough has chilled, preheat the oven to 350°F. One preheated, sprinkle the top of each cookie with a pinch of sea salt, then bake the cookies for 18 to 20 minutes or until the edges and the top of the cookies are golden brown. Rotate the pans halfway through the baking if your oven bakes uneven.Let the cookies cool in the pan for 3 to 4 minutes, to let them firm up. Then slide a thin butter knife or small metal offset spatula around the cookie to loosen it from pan. I like to slide it into a couple of spots around the cookie to loosen it. Then slide the knife or spatula under the cookie. The cookies should just pop right out. Move the cookie to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
Recipe adapted from Dorie Greenspan's cookbook Baking with Dorie (<-affiliate link)