Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

Brown butter? 

Check.

Cold brew coffee? 

Check. 

Jack Daniel's? 

Check. 

Okay, I don't really care about that last one, but I feel like some of you might. Like, for some reason people get really excited when food contains booze. 

Well, get excited, because this dough contains an entire teaspoon of the stuff!

I've been trying to find ways to use up a bottle of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey since I got it three years ago. I was making a cookie recipe that called for bourbon, so I went to Giant Eagle and asked the liquor section worker for it. She handed me this bottle of Jack, and I knew nothing about spirits at the time, so I was like, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ k!

Spoiler alert: It's neither bourbon nor whiskey. 

It contains whiskey, but it's blended with a honey flavored liqueur. It works well as a flavoring, though. 

If you've never made brown butter, you're seriously missing out. It deepens the flavor of whatever you're baking or cooking, and brings in a nutty note. When used in sweet things, it takes on a flavor reminiscent of butterscotch. 

The process of making brown butter is simple, and only takes an extra 5 minutes or so. All you do is melt your butter in a light colored saucepan over medium heat (the light color makes it easier to track the browning), let it get past the foamy stage, then wait until it turns an amber color. Done. 

You can buy cold brew coffee concentrate pre-made from brands like Chameleon and Stumptown, just make sure you get it unflavored and unsweetened. But it really is super easy (and WAY cheaper) to just make it yourself! Check out my original cold brew coffee recipe (all you need is coffee, a pitcher, and some coffee filters), or my DIY cold brew coffee bags for an even easier method. 

The other ingredients you'll need are your standard baking ingredients: eggs, flour, baking soda, salt, and vanilla extract. 

OH, and chocolate chips!

I use two varieties of Ghirardelli chocolate for this recipe. I've found that milk chocolate chips lack that good, rich chocolatey flavor, but bittersweet chocolate is too... bitter. 

Imagine that.

By using an even mix of the two, you get the best of both flavor worlds, plus it's just fancy. Isn't that why we're all here? 

Let's get to it. 

Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

2 tbsp cold brew coffee concentrate

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp kosher salt

3/4 cup milk chocolate chips

3/4 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

Melt 1/2 cup butter (1 stick) over medium heat and let cook until amber in color. Pour into a measuring cup, and fill to 1/2 cup with cold brew coffee (approximately 2 tbsp). Cream both butters and sugars until light and fluffy. Add eggs, Jack Daniels and vanilla extract and mix until well combined. Sift together 2 cups flour, 1 tsp kosher salt, and 1 tsp baking soda, then add gradually into wet ingredients. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Scoop into 1 oz. balls 2" apart on a parchment lined baking sheet. Refrigerate at least 1 hour, or up to overnight. Preheat oven to 375 and bake for 12-15 minutes. Transfer to cooling rack and store in an airtight container once cooled completely. 

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The Details

Need a little more info? Let's break down the recipe in detail. 

Step 1: Brown the Butter

Melt 1/2 cup butter (1 stick) over medium heat and let cook until amber in color. Pour into a measuring cup, and fill to 1/2 cup with cold brew coffee. 

In the process of browning the butter, we'll be boiling out the water that would normally go into the dough. It's important that we replace that to keep proper moisture content in the dough. Once you pour the melted brown butter into a glass measuring cup, you'll notice it's slightly below the half cup mark where it would have started. Add in enough cold brew coffee concentrate to raise it to the half cup mark to not only replace that lost water but to add the flavor from the coffee.

Side note, when buying glass measuring cups, go with Pyrex, not Anchor. Pyrex ones are dishwasher safe (top rack only, learned that the hard way), and the measurements don't rub off like the Anchor ones do. My mom has had the same Pyrex measuring cups for as long as I can remember and of course they have some scratches and the red measurements aren't quite as vibrant as they were 25 years ago, but nothing like the totally bare Anchor cup pictured above. That happened after one wash, by the way. 

Stick the whole thing in the freezer and let it start to solidify. We want it to be a similar texture to room temperature butter. This should take about 15-20 minutes. If it gets too hard, no problem - just let it sit out on the counter until it's nice and soft. 

This recipe calls for 1 cup of butter, but we're only browning half. This will give us the perfect balance of the nutty notes from the brown butter, the dairy flavor from the regular butter, and the coffee, which will help enhance the chocolate flavor from the chips.

Step 2: Combine Wet Ingredients

Cream 1/2 cup butter, the brown butter/coffee mixture, 3/4 cup granulated sugar, and 3/4 cup dark brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add 2 eggs, 1 tsp Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey (or whiskey or bourbon), and 1 tsp vanilla extract and mix until well combined. 

I use my KitchenAid stand mixer for this step, just because it's SO easy. Use the paddle attachment and set the speed to 5 or so and let it roll. I use this time to prep my dry ingredients. Feel free to use a hand mixer, or even to mix by hand. 

When buying a vanilla extract, look out for imitation vanilla extract. It tends to give a strange flavor once baked, in my opinion. Pure vanilla extract gives you a true vanilla flavor. I currently have Spicely organic vanilla extract and it's great. Simply Organic is another great brand, as is Flavorganics. Look for details like organic, pure, Madagascar, and glass bottles as a sign of quality. 

Also, feel free to leave out the Jack Daniel's if that's not your style, or if you're under 21 and don't have a way to purchase it; just increase the vanilla extract to 2 tsp. 

Step 3: Add Dry Ingredients

Sift together 2 cups flour, 1 tsp kosher salt, and 1 tsp baking soda, then add gradually into wet ingredients. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.

For this part, I turn off the mixer and add about 1/3 of the dry ingredients then start on a low speed and gradually increase the speed to medium until all the dry flour is gone; turn off and add another 1/3, etc. Repeat until all dry ingredients are incorporated. If you add all of the dry ingredients at once, you run the risk of flour-bombing yourself and making a mess in the kitchen. 

The dough will be too soft to handle after first mixing it, so letting it chill for an hour right is absolutely necessary. Letting it rest will also allow the ingredients to start to marry, promoting even better flavor.

Step 4: Place & Bake

Scoop into 1 oz. balls 2" apart on a parchment lined baking sheet. Refrigerate at least 1 hour, or up to overnight. Preheat oven to 375 and bake for 12-15 minutes. Transfer to cooling rack and store in an airtight container once cooled completely. 

If you don't have a cookie dough scoop, use a digital food scale and weigh each dough ball to ensure even size and baking. If you don't have either of those, you can always just use a spoon to scoop the dough and eyeball it. 

I definitely recommend using a scoop or a spoon when handling the dough since this is such a butter-heavy dough and it will get soft and sticky pretty quickly in the heat of your hands, thus why we're refrigerating both after mixing and after forming. We want the butter in the balls to be nice and firm so they don't flatten in the oven too fast. These are meant to be thin and crispy cookies, so they will spread quite a bit. 

After baking, let the cookies sit on the baking sheets for 1-2 minutes until you can easily slide a spatula underneath, then transfer to a cooling rack and let them cool completely. They'll keep for about 5-7 days in an airtight container - if they last that long!