Two things I can always rely on to provide me a delicious snack are chocolate and caramel. Due to their steadfast loyalty to my tastebuds, I wanted to honor them in these brown butter chocolate chip and brittle cookies. I didn’t want to just use any old caramel for this cookie. I thought it would be too hard or too soft depending on the way I cooked it, so I chose to make brittle instead.
Brittle can be found in the form of peanut brittle, pecan brittle, etc, but I like it just by itself. To make brittle, you simply add a bit of baking soda to your cooked caramel, and voila! The caramel bubbles bring a beautiful aerated, crispy, crunchy delicious brittle to fill your cookies with. This recipe is a bit more in-depth than some of my others, but the result is extraordinary, and hopefully, it will become a recipe you cherish.
Brittle for the cookies? What’s that?
As you read earlier, brittle is just caramel with baking soda added. Often times it is paired with nuts and broken up into bite sized bits for snacking. For the chocolate chip and brittle cookies, we’re going to break half of our batch of brittle into bite sized pieces, and we’re going to blitz the other half. Blitzing it will turn it into a fine, caramel sugar powder which will wind up going into the dough. This is such a delicious way to impart that caramel flavor throughout the entire cookie. Not to mention, it pairs exceptionally well with the browned butter.
How do you get such big chocolate puddles?
So I came across a bit of a secret when making these cookies that I think you are going to love. One thing I love to do is to chop up chocolate bars to get large chocolate puddles in my cookies. But the problem with that is that chocolate bars are expensive! In a little work-around, I found a shortcut that has changed my life! I didn’t have any chocolate bars on hand when I made these cookies, but I knew I wanted them to have big pools of chocolate. So I melted a bag of chocolate chips in my microwave until just liquified, spread the chocolate in a thin layer on a silpat sheet, and stuck it in the freezer. In doing so, I basically made my own chocolate bar! Once it was frozen, I was able to chop it up just like a chocolate bar. This saved me so much money, and you can bet your bottom dollar I will be doing this from now on!
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip and Brittle Cookies
Ingredients
For the Brittle:
- 1 cup Granulated Sugar
- 1/4 cup Water
- 3 tbsp Unsalted Butter
- 1 tablespoon Heavy Whipping Cream
- 1/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
For the Dough:
- 2 3/4 cups All-Purpose Flour
- 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
- 3/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 1 cup Unsalted Butter
- 1 tablespoon Water
- 1 cup Light Brown Sugar
- 1/3 cup Granulated Sugar
- 1/2 of the Brittle ground into powder
- 2 Large Eggs
- 2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
- 10 oz chocolate chopped
Instructions
For the Brittle:
- In a heavy bottomed pot, add the water and sugar. Place over medium heat, and allow to caramelize until it becomes a deep amber color.
- Once the caramel reaches the amount of golden that you are looking for, add the butter and cream, whisking constantly. Be careful, at this stage the caramel will bubble up and release a lot of steam.
- After the butter and cream are incorporated into the caramel, add the baking soda, and whisk to combine. The caramel mixture will begin to bubble. At this point, pour the caramel into a parchment lined pan and allow to cool.
- Once the brittle is cooled, break it in half. Take one half of it, and blend it into a fine powder in a food processor or blender. The result will be about 1/2 cup of coarse caramelized sugar. This powdered brittle sugar will be used in the cookie dough.
- For the other half of the cooled brittle, break it into little pieces, about the size of a pea or a chocolate chip. These pieces will be added to the cookie as an add-in.
For the Dough:
- Add 1/2 cup of butter to a saucepan and brown it. Once it is browned, add it to a heat proof bowl, and add the other 1/2 cup of butter to it. Browning only half of the butter like this allows for more moisture to be retained, and it still brings all of the flavor. Add 1 tablespoon fo water to the butter, and allow the entire mixture to cool to room temperature, or until the butter is solidified, but still very soft.
- While the butter is cooling down preheat the oven to 350°F, and add the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda into a medium-sized bowl. Whisk to combine. Set aside.
- Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, or a hand mixer, beat the soft, solidified, brown butter until the added water combines into the butter, and it is light in color.
- Add the granulated sugar, brown sugar, and powdered brittle. Mix on high for 2-3 minutes or until the butter mixture is light and fluffy and the sugars have fully creamed into the butter.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing until fully incorporated before adding the next. After the eggs have been added, mix in the vanilla.
- Add the flour mixture, and mix on low speed to incorporate it until just a bit of flour is left un-mixed. At this point, add in the brittle pieces and your chopped chocolate. Mix to evenly distribute the add-ins throughout the dough, and to incorporate that last bit of flour.
- Scoop into tablespoon sized dough pieces and bake in preheated oven for 10-15 minutes. For best results, refrigerate the scooped dough balls for 24 hours to allow all of the flavors to truly combine. Enjoy!
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