This small batch recipe for brown butter egg yolk cookies yields a chewy cookie packed with dark chocolate. This recipe makes 12 cookies and can be halved to make a mere six!
This small batch recipe for brown butter cookies yields a chewy cookie packed with dark chocolate. A combination of egg yolks and brown sugar gives these cookies perfect texture.
So I’ve made these cookies maybe 5 times in the past month. I’m a little obsessed. The initial idea was simply to add halva to chocolate chip cookies but I wanted to amp up the flavor so I created it with brown butter: knowing that the ‘nutty’ parts of the taste would complement the halva so well. In the end it appears I have basically created a one (or two) egg yolk chocolate chip cookie with brown butter!
Why do I use egg yolks in cookies rather than whole eggs? Because they make for a chewy cookie that stays chewy for days. Think chewy to the point of ‘bendy’. It also gives a richer, fully flavor to the dough which I really love.
And those leftover egg whites can become: a pavlova, double chocolate chip cookies, swiss meringue buttercream or mini pavlovas.
Chocolate chunks, chopped from a good quality chocolate bar (not bought from a bag claiming to be chocolate chunks) will taste better and give you a better melt within the cookie.
Over medium heat, melt the butter and then cook it as it sputters and spits. Once it starts to foam and you see brown bits on the bottom it’s browning. As it starts to go quiet it has browned.
Moisture is lost in the browning process and depending on how long you brown it you’ll have more or less butter afterwards. This is why I ask you to weigh it after browning – we want to make sure we have just enough.
You may use full fat yogurt in place of the sour cream or even labneh. I have tried the labneh and it was probably my favorite.
Yes, absolutely yes to both. Just be sure to weigh your butter after you brown it and calculate how much you’ll need accordingly.
Structurally speaking, how much a cookie spreads will depend on a few factors: how much butter is in the recipe (did you weigh it after you browned it?) how big the yolks are (a standard ‘large egg’ carton will have different sized eggs) and how you measured the flour (a scale is best!). If yours did not spread enough then there either wasn’t enough butter or there was too much flour. If your cookies did spread a lot then you had too much butter or not enough flour. Egg yolks will affect the recipe, but not as much.
Also how long you let the dough ‘sit’ before you bake it will affect spread as well: as the dough sits the flour absorbs moisture and the cookie will spread less.
Finally, what type of chocolate you use will affect spread as well: a chip will yield a thicker cookie with specks of chocolate. If you use feves or big chunks of chocolate this will push the dough out and cause it to spread more.
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Worth the extra work! Brown butter makes this the best chocolate chip recipe I’ve ever eaten. I wish the halva was a bit more pronounced after it was baked but if I could live off cookie dough for the rest of my life, this would be the recipe I choose?
These cookies are awesome. Would definitely make them again and add even more halva lol.