Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

These brown butter chocolate chip cookies are thick, chewy, and packed with a deep nutty flavor. Cream cheese adds a subtle tang and an exceptionally soft, tender bite that keeps them perfect for days.

These cookies started as an experiment in layering flavor: browned butter for nuttiness, cream cheese for tang and chew, two types of chocolate chips for depth. Perfectly browned butter, allowed to cool and resolidify, creates a pillowy-soft cookie with just a hint of toasted hazelnut flavor. In French, brown butter is beurre noisette, which means “hazelnut butter.” It perfectly describes the nutty aroma.

I never pick favorites amongst my cookie children, especially my chocolate chip cookie recipes, but I do have a top 3. These brown butter chocolate chip cookies are up there with my thick chocolate chip cookies and these sensational cream cheese chocolate chip cookies. They are all soft, chewy, and packed with as much chocolate as the dough can handle.

Ingredients & Substitutions

• All-Purpose Flour and Cake Flour: Together, these two flours create the ideal structure for thick, chewy cookies. The all-purpose flour provides gluten and backbone while the cake flour, with its lower protein content and finer texture, keeps the centers soft and tender.
• Baking Soda and Baking Powder
• Cornstarch interrupts gluten development and softens the flour blend, which keeps the cookies thick and tender well after baking. It also compounds with the cake flour for a noticeably chewier result.
• Kosher Salt
• Unsalted Butter: This is the flavor driver of the entire recipe. Browning it first develops deep nutty, toffee notes by toasting the milk solids, and removing some of the water produces a richer, more aromatic dough. Cool the brown butter fully before mixing so it does not melt the sugars and cause the cookies to spread too thin.
• Cream Cheese: Full-fat brick-style cream cheese adds moisture, richness, and a subtle tang that rounds out the sweetness and makes the interior stay soft and plush. Whipped or light cream cheese contains too much air and water and will weaken the dough. If you love cream cheese in cookies, my red velvet cookies use it to equally good effect.
• Light Brown Sugar: Contributes moisture, chew, and a deeper caramel flavor from its molasses content. Dark brown sugar works if that is what you have on hand.
• Granulated Sugar
• Eggs
• Vanilla Extract
• Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips: Deliver classic chocolate flavor and hold their shape in the warm cookie. A full cup ensures chocolate in every bite without overloading the dough structure.
• Bittersweet Chocolate Chips (60%): Bring a deeper, slightly bitter chocolate note that keeps the cookies from tasting one-dimensionally sweet. The contrast between semi-sweet and bittersweet chips creates more complex chocolate pockets throughout.

See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.

Variations on These Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

• Change the chocolate chips. Use all bittersweet chips, dark chocolate chips, a chopped chocolate bar, or M&Ms for a fun variation — sometimes you will even catch me using milk chocolate chips, like when making this milk chocolate brownie.
• Add nuts. Chopped walnuts, pecans, or toasted hazelnuts fold in easily and lean directly into the brown butter flavor already in the dough.
• Make a cookie cake! Use this same recipe to make an amazing cookie cake! Follow the baking instructions in this chocolate chip cookie cake recipe.

Professional Tips

• Cool the brown butter completely before creaming. Warm or liquid brown butter will melt the sugars during mixing, causing the cookies to spread flat. Fully re-solidifying the butter, either at room temperature or in the refrigerator, is what gives these cookies their thick, chewy structure.
• Do not skip the overnight chill. Even solidified brown butter behaves differently from standard room-temperature butter, and a full overnight rest in the refrigerator is the difference between cookies that hold their shape and cookies that spread thin. Two hours is the minimum; overnight is better.
• Scrape the milk solids from the bottom of the pan. Those small brown flecks are not a sign the butter has burned — they are the flavor. Stir with a silicone spatula throughout browning so the solids toast evenly rather than scorching on the bottom before the rest of the butter catches up, just like when making these brown butter brownies!

How to Make Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Brown the butter first so it has time to cool completely before you make the dough.

Step 1: Brown the butter. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat, then continue cooking, swirling the pan occasionally. Every so often, drag a silicone spatula across the bottom to scrape up the milk solids. The butter will foam, then the foam will subside, and you will start to smell something nutty and rich. When the solids have turned golden brown and the butter smells deeply nutty, pour it immediately into a bowl, scraping every last bit from the pan.

Do not rush this step by turning up the heat. Medium-low gives the solids time to brown evenly and the moisture time to evaporate, which is where the flavor lives.

Step 2: Cool the butter until solid. Set the bowl of browned butter aside at room temperature until it cools and re-solidifies completely. This is not optional. Re-solidified brown butter creams differently from melted brown butter, which is what keeps these cookies thick and chewy rather than thin and greasy. If you are in a hurry, refrigerate the bowl.

Step 3: Whisk the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, combine the all-purpose flour, cake flour, baking soda, baking powder, cornstarch, and salt. Whisk until everything is evenly distributed and set aside.

Step 4: Cream the butter and cream cheese. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the re-solidified brown butter and cream cheese together until smooth and combined. Add both sugars and mix on medium-high speed for 3 to 4 minutes, until the mixture looks noticeably lighter in color and creamy in texture.

Step 5: Add the eggs and vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl as you go. Add the vanilla extract with the second egg.

Step 6: Add the flour mixture. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture in 4 to 5 additions. Add the next addition as soon as most of the flour from the previous one has disappeared into the dough. Do not wait until each addition is fully incorporated before adding the next, or you risk overmixing by the time the last portion goes in.

Step 7: Add the chocolate chips. Add the chocolate chips with the mixer on low or fold them in by hand with a wooden spoon until evenly distributed.

I like to wait until the last bit of flour is almost fully incorporated to add the chocolate chips. This prevents overmixing and keeps the cookies tender.

Step 8: Refrigerate the dough. Cover the bowl and refrigerate overnight. Even fully re-solidified brown butter does not behave identically to standard creamed butter, and the rest time allows the dough to firm up so the cookies bake tall and chewy rather than spreading thin.

At the very minimum, refrigerate the dough for 2 hours. Overnight is genuinely the move here, and I almost always plan for it.

Step 9: Portion the dough. Preheat the oven to 350°F (conventional) and line several baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Roll the chilled dough into balls approximately the size of a golf ball. Place them 2 inches apart on the prepared sheets. The dough will be firm and cold from the refrigerator, which is exactly what you want.

Step 10: Bake. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, starting to check at 10. The edges will be set and just beginning to brown, while the centers look matte but still soft.

The cookies will continue to set as they cool on the pan, and if you bake until the centers look done in the oven, they will be overdone by the time they cool.

Step 11: Cool on the pan, then transfer. Let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before moving them to a wire rack. They need that time on the hot pan to finish setting up. If you eat one straight off the sheet, it will seem underdone in the center, and I completely understand the temptation, but give them the full rest.

Recipe FAQs

Before You Go

Brown butter and dark chocolate make these cookies worth coming back to every time. If you are looking for what to make next, browse my Cookie Recipes or make these caramel blondies next!