Brown Sugar Cookies
No chocolate, no nuts — just deep butterscotch flavour from brown sugar and browned butter.
Makes 24 cookies · Prep 25 min · Rise 60 min · Bake 11 min
Ingredients
Dough
- 1 cup Butter
- 1 1/2 cups Brown sugar, packed
- 1/4 cup Granulated sugar
- 1 Egg
- 1 Egg yolk
- 2 tsp Vanilla extract
- 2 1/4 cups All-purpose flour
- 1 tsp Baking soda
- 3/4 tsp Salt
Instructions
Dough
- Melt the butter in a light-coloured pan over medium heat and keep cooking, swirling, until it foams, then quietens and the milk solids at the bottom turn golden brown and smell nutty. Pour immediately into a bowl, scraping in every brown speck. (Tip: Use a light pan so you can see the colour. The solids go from golden to burnt in well under a minute, and you can't come back from burnt.)
- Let the browned butter cool until barely warm, about 20 minutes. (Tip: Hot butter will scramble the egg. It should feel no warmer than your hand.)
- Whisk in both sugars, then the egg, extra yolk, and vanilla, beating for a minute until glossy.
- Whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together and fold in just until no dry flour remains.
Chill
- Chill at least an hour to firm the melted butter back up. (Tip: Non-negotiable with browned butter. Skip it and the cookies spread into one sheet.)
Bake
- Scoop into mounds, space well apart, and bake at 175°C (350°F) until the edges are deep golden and set but the centres look soft.
- Cool on the pan 5 minutes before moving to a rack.
Tips
- Finish with flaky salt: A few flakes pressed onto each dough ball before baking sharpens the butterscotch considerably. Salt suppresses bitterness and heightens perceived sweetness, so a little on the surface does more than the same amount mixed into the dough.
- Butter browned too far: If the solids went past deep brown to black and smell acrid, start over — burnt milk solids are bitter and there's no rescuing the batch. Straining doesn't help, because the flavour is already in the fat.