I didn’t think I’d be posting a new recipe this week, but I made these cookies yesterday and I loved them so much they needed to be put on here ASAP.
I took yesterday off from work because life has been beyond crazy with school, work and a million other things and I knew I would need a day in which I could just relax and try not to be stressed out.
Therapeutic baking is what I usually do when I’m stressed, so these cookies happened!
These are ‘very intense’ because the chocolate we’re using is the new Lindt Excellence 95% chocolate. A little bit goes a long way if you’re just sharing the bar with friends or family, but coupled with the nuttiness of the brown butter and sweetness of the toffee, the pools of chocolate really shine.
Feel free to substitute the 95% chocolate with something else if that’s more your thing. It is a pretty dark, borderline bitter chocolate, but it works so well in these cookies. I also like 60-75% chocolate in brown butter cookies, so those would make a great substitute.
To get these beautiful pools of chocolate in your cookies, it’s so important to use a chocolate bar chopped up, rather than chocolate chips. Chocolate chips are made to retain their shape and as a result, don’t have as much cocoa butter as a bar of chocolate does. While I’m all for chocolate chips every now and then (my original brown butter chocolate chip cookie uses mini chocolate chips), I’m all for chopped chocolate in our cookies. Or those fancy Valrhona feves. Those are good.
I like big pools of chocolate in my cookies. If chocolate chips are more your thing, that’s totally fine. One thing you can’t skip out on in these cookies is the toffee bits. The chocolate is good, but the toffee makes these cookies. It perfectly balances out the strong chocolate, but doesn’t get lost to the intensity.
I’m all for it.
Grab yourself some incredibly dark chocolate and some toffee bits, then head to your kitchen and make these cookies. I’m pretty sure you’ll love them!
Ingredients
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp. vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract)
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 bars Lindt Excellence 95% chocolate, chopped
- 1 cup toffee bits (I used Heath)
Instructions
- Brown the butter by melting over a medium heat. Let the butter foam and you will begin to see it change colour.
- Once you see brown milk solids at the bottom of your pan and smell a nutty aroma, remove from the heat and place in a bowl. Be sure to scrape out the sediment because that will give these cookies an incredible nutty flavour. Set aside to cool slightly.
- Once cool, combine browned butter with both sugars in a mixing bowl and cream together. Add the eggs, one at a time, then the vanilla bean paste.
- Add baking soda, salt, cream of tartar and all-purpose flour, stirring to combine. Once dry ingredients have been incorporated, stir in the chopped chocolate and toffee bits.
- Place dough in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. The longer it sits in the fridge, the better the cookies will be!
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Remove dough from fridge and scoop onto parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing a couple of inches apart because cookies will spread during baking.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes, until edges are golden brown. Allow cookies to sit on pan for a couple of minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.
