Brown Butter Toffee Cookies

Name: Brown Butter Toffee Cookies
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 3 dozen
Ingredients: 1 cup unsalted butter; 1 cup brown sugar (200g); 2/3 cup white sugar (135g); 2 eggs (room temperature preferred); 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract; 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (350g); 1 teaspoon cornstarch (cornflour in UK); 1 teaspoon baking powder; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 3/4 teaspoon salt; 1 cup milk chocolate toffee pieces ((Like Heath Milk Chocolate Toffee Pieces) 170g); sea salt (for sprinkling)

January 18, 2017 Updated February 3, 2017 BySam 56 Comments

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Sweet, soft cookies packed with toffee pieces and just slightly salted. These Brown Butter Toffee Cookies are flavored with vanilla and a generous amount of perfectly browned butter. Recipe includes easy steps for browning butter!

The inspiration for these Brown Butter Toffee Cookies came to me via the cafeteria of the hospital where I work.

After taking our lunch together last week (I think I’ve mentioned that Zach and I work at the same hospital, just in different departments), Zach went to buy himself a drink. As we went through the checkout, I saw small, clear-wrapped package labeled “Butter Toffee Cookies” and immediately threw them at him.

I need these — for research!

He bought them and the ~~graceless mouth-stuffing~~ research commenced, but I was honestly a little disappointed.

They were almost too sweet– there was too much artificial flavor somewhere in there. Faux vanilla, maybe? Some sort of preservative?

They weren’t exactly crunchy, but still somehow seemed a little too dry for me. And for a cookie that touted the word “Butter” right in its name, I expected a much… butterier flavor.

I had some good starting points, thanks to an underwhelming cafeteria cookie.

These Brown Butter Toffee Cookies live up to the “butter” part of their name.

For the best, butteriest flavor, you’re going to use browned butter in this recipe. You may have spied this ingredient in several of my other cookie recipes, or maybe in my recent brown butter blondies (just… yum).

I absolutely adore browned butter because of its nearly nutty, toffee-like (what better complement to the toffee add-ins) flavor.

Brown butter used to seem intimidating to me — you have to get out a saucepan and turn on the stove and, yes, watch it very carefully for a few minutes, but it’s really a simple process. The recipe below includes step-by-step instructions on how to perfectly brown butter.

Brown Butter Toffee Cookies, soft & chewy with sweet crunchy toffee pieces and a sprinkle of sea salt! || Sugar Spun Run — Hint: It should look like this when you’re done

Make sure to cool the browned butter for 25-30 minutes before adding your other ingredients, otherwise you run the risk of melting your sugars, and could end up with some seriously runny, unusable dough.

This recipe does not require any chilling (I know, a lot of my recent cookie recipes have required fridge time). However, it may be covered and chilled, if you would like, and this would likely give the cookies an even richer, more buttery flavor.

Keep in mind that that the dough gets a bit crumbly when chilled and will need to warm back up to room temperature in order to scoop and bake.

I have a serious cookie obsession and each time I make a new version I sincerely believe that it’s my new favorite, and these are no exception. They are so good — slightly crisped exteriors, crunchy toffee bits accented with milk chocolate, and a nutty, buttery flavor in every bite (especially in those soft centers!).

Make sure to top everything off with a small shower of sea salt, which really intensifies all of the already robust flavors of these brown butter toffee cookies.

I also cannot recommend strongly enough that you re-heat these briefly in the microwave before eating (about 9-seconds per cookie, in my microwave).

Warm cookies are the best cookies.

Enjoy!