Brown Butter Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies

4.86 from 7 votes

Brown Butter Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies

These brown butter toffee chocolate chip cookies are a crowd pleasing dessert, perfect for holiday baking or special occasions. This recipe calls for resting the cookie dough for two days and sprinkling the baked cookies with sea salt, elevating these delicious cookies to something you’d find in a high end bakery!

Prep Time45

Cook Time20

Resting Time2

Total Time2 1 5

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Servings: Cookies

Calories: 438kcal

Author: Sophia Assunta

Ingredients

Toffee

6 tablespoons unsalted butter
¾ cup brown sugar light or dark, lightly packed
1 tsp kosher salt
water as needed

Cookie Dough

1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), cut into 1 inch pieces
3-4 ice cubes 1.5-2 oz
1 tsp kosher salt
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 ½ cups brown sugar light or dark, packed
2 tsp espresso powder
2 tsp kosher salt
2 large eggs
½ tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 ½ cups all purpose flour
6 oz high quality chocolate chopped
flaky sea salt for sprinkling (optional)

Instructions

Toffee

Line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicone mat
In a medium saucepan melt butter, brown sugar, and salt over medium heat. Stir until the butter has fully incorporated into the sugar.
Stirring constantly, continue cooking the toffee mixture until it reaches 280-290 degrees F on a candy thermometer. If the mixture starts to separate and get oily, add a few teaspoons of water and remix very fast until it comes back together. It should take about 10-15 minutes to reach 290 degrees.
Once the toffee reaches the desired temperature, immediately remove from heat and pour onto the prepared baking sheet.
Let cool for about 10 minutes at room temperature so you’re not placing boiling hot pan in your freezer. Once it’s cooled down slightly, place the entire baking sheet in the freezer while you prepare the cookie dough. You can make the toffee up to an hour or two in advance.

Brown Butter

Cut the 2 sticks of butter into 1 inch pieces. In a medium saucepan or pot melt the butter over medium to medium high heat.
The butter will bubble up at first. But, keep slowly stirring and after about 5 minutes the bubbles will lessen and you will start to see the milk solids at the bottom of the pan start to brown. At this point, I normally turn down the heat to medium or medium low. Continue cooking until the butter has a nutty smell and the majority milk solids are a dark amber brown color. Watch carefully, and be careful not to burn the brown butter. You do not want it black.
Once the butter has browned, remove from heat. Add one ice cube. The mixture will bubble up a lot, so slowing stir it in and let the ice cube melt.
Add the remaining ice cubes and stir until melted.
Continue to let the brown butter cool while you mix up the remaining ingredients.

Cookie Dough

If you haven’t done so already, chop the chocolate bars and set aside.
Mix the granulated sugar, brown sugar, salt, espresso powder, and baking soda in a large bowl.
Measure our 2 ½ cups flour (spooned and leveled) and set aside.
In a smaller bowl, whisk together the 2 eggs and 2 tsp vanilla extracts, and set aside.
Pour the melted brown butter into the granulated sugar mixture and mix with a whisk or spatula until completely combined.
Add the 2/ ½ cups flour the butter and sugar mixture. Using a spatula, mix until there is no visible flour in the mixture, making sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl to incorporate everything.
Then, stir in the egg/vanilla mixture and continue mixing until combined.
At this point, you can take out the toffee from the freezer. If the toffee is too frozen to chop like you did the chocolate, you can break it into a few smaller pieces and add to a gallon ziplock bag. Seal the bag (you can also double bag the toffee as the toffee can break through the bag ). Hit the bagged toffee with a rolling pin until bite sized chunks form.
Add the toffee and the chopped chocolate to the cookie dough and thoroughly mix using a spatula or your hands.
Place a piece or parchment paper on a cookie sheet.
Once it’s mixed you can use a ¼ measuring cup or an ice cream scoop to measure out balls of dough onto the prepared cookie sheet. At this point, since we’re only resting the cookie dough, you can place them close together on the pan.
If the dough is still warm and spreads out when you try to form balls of dough, you can put the whole bowl in the fridge or freezer for 20 minutes to cool it down. This should help make it easier to form the cookies.
Cover the tray with plastic wrap, leaving a small corner uncovered to allow the cookies to dry out a bit.
Place the cookie tray in the fridge for 36-48 hours.
When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Line multiple baking trays with parchment paper or silicone mats.
Place 4 to 6 cookies on the cookie sheet at least 2-3 inches apart from each other. These are big cookies that spread a lot!
Bake 18-20 minutes
Remove from oven and immediately sprinkle with sea salt (optional).
Let cool completely before trying to remove from the baking tray.

Notes

This recipe makes 16 extra large cookies or about 3 dozen regular cookies.
I used a ¼ cup ice cream scoop for each cookie, which makes a big bakery style cookie. You can make regular sized cookies using about 2 tbsp of dough.
These will keep for 4-5 days in an airtight container in the fridge or at room temperature.
The recipe can be halved or doubled as needed. Don't want to make toffee? Buy it! You can use store bought toffee in place of making it. You’ll want 6-7 ounces toffee in place of the homemade recipe. You can also omit the toffee altogether and replace with more chocolate.
Measure out the flour using the spoon and swipe method of spooning the flour into the measure cups and swiping the excess off the top with a knife. If you dip the measuring cup directly into the flour, it can pack down and you will add too much flour to the recipe.
Make sure the brown butter has cooled down before adding to the sugar. If it’s too warm it can start to cook the sugar making the final cookies grainy.
This makes a very soft dough but if firms up in the fridge. If after you make the cookie dough, it is still too warm and spreads out when you try to form cookie dough balls, place the bowl of cookie dough back in the fridge or freezer for 20 minutes to firm up and try forming the cookie dough balls again.
Let the cookies cool completely before you remove them from the pans.
This recipe is adapted from this Buzzfeed Tasty video

Nutrition