If you love soft, melt-in-your mouth sugar cookies, you’ve come to the right place. These big sugar cookies remind me of ones you’d get at a bakery, but with one special ingredient: glorious brown butter.
Brown butter is one of life’s greatest pleasures, whether it’s drizzled over mashed potatoes or mixed into cookie dough. It’s such an easy way to elevate recipes because it doesn’t take a lot of effort but the payoff is big. In this recipe, the brown butter gives the cookies a decadently rich, nutty, almost caramel-like flavor that is absolutely magical. You must make them immediately. Sorry to be bossy, but you absolutely must.
How can you tell if butter is brown?
You can tell by both its color and its aroma. The butter will initially sizzle and foam (be sure to give it swirl or stir pretty often), but as it cooks, some of the foaming will subside, the color will darken from golden to golden brown, you’ll see toasted milk solids on the bottom of the pan, and the butter will smell nutty. When you get to this point, pull it off the heat. Butter can very quickly go from brown to burnt! Pour it into a heatproof bowl to stop the cooking process and let it cool.
Do you have to chill brown butter sugar cookie dough?
Yes! After you roll the scoops of dough in the sugar coating, pop ’em in the fridge for 15 minutes before baking. This gives the butter a chance to firm up so the cookies don’t spread too thin. The dough balls will stay good for up to three days in an airtight container in the fridge, but if you’re chilling them past the required 15 minutes, wait until right before baking to roll them in sugar.