These Brown Butter Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies are crispy on the edges, chewy in the center and bursting with brown butter and nutty flavor! They're rich, decadent, and quite irresistible.
This recipe was originally published April 2022, updated June 2023.
If you're a fan of Brown Butter, then this recipe is for you! Brown Butter Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies are made with browned butter, dark brown sugar, pieces of pecan, and pools of chocolate chunks. It's the perfect cookie
Why You'll Love This Recipe
- Brown Butter: Made with brown butter, these cookies have a nutty flavor with deep notes of dark brown sugar.
- No Chill: There's an optional chill period, but it's not required, so you can have these cookies ready in under 30 minutes.
- Texture: They're crispy on the edges and. soft in the center, with pools of chocolate.
Jump to:
Ingredients You'll Need
- Butter: Using brown butter in this recipe gives the cookies an even greater nutty flavor. It really takes a chocolate chip cookie to new heights when you take that extra step and brown the butter!
- Flour: Best to use all purpose flour. Make sure to properly measure.
- Cornstarch: I add a teaspoon to give the cookies a little help lifting and avoiding them becoming completely flat in the oven when baking. After all, brown butter is...melted.
- Leaveners: Baking soda and baking powder to help lift and spread the cookie.
- Salt: To add flavor and balance.
- Sugar: I highly recommend dark brown instead of light because has more flavor and with these cookies, I am all in with the flavor!
- Egg: 1 egg and 1 egg yolk to add a little extra chew to the cookies.
- Vanilla extract: Use as much as you like. More flavor, the better.
- Chocolate: I use 70% chocolate, chopped. You can use dark or semi-sweet, and swap out the bar for chips.
- Pecans: I like to buy pecan pieces, but you can buy them whole if you like, and then chop them. It's optional, but I do recommend toasting your pecans for additional flavor.
See recipe card for quantities.
How to Make Brown Butter Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Steps to make brown butter
- Melt butter in a medium sauce pan on medium heat. Stir the butter to make sure it melts evenly. Once the butter is completely melted, it will start to foam up. Continue stirring the butter. As it cooks, it will start to change into a deeper color. This could take 6-8 minutes.
- You’ll start to notice a nutty aroma and the butter will begin to have brown specs at the bottom of the pan.
- The entire process of browning butter from start to finish should not take more than 10 minutes on medium heat.
- Once butter is browned, pour it into a heat proof bowl and set it aside to cool for about 5 or 10 minutes.
Steps to Make Brown Butter Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Dry Ingredients: In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cornstarch, and salt and mix and set aside.
Wet Ingredients: Once brown butter is slightly cooled, add the sugars (both brown and granulated) into the bowl of the brown butter, and mix with a spatula. Add the egg + egg yolk and vanilla extract and stir until combined.
Combine dry & wet: Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Add the chocolate and pecans and mix.
Scoop & Bake: Scoop cookie dough using a large cookie scoop. Place cookie balls on baking sheet, making sure to spread them apart at least 2". Bake for 10-11 minutes, depending on desired crisp.
Hint: Use a large cookie scoop to achieve uniform, round cookies.
Storage
Store the brown butter pecan chocolate chip cookies at room temperature in an airtight container for 4-5 days.
Pro Tips
Measure Flour Correctly: As always, with any recipe, use a kitchen scale, as it is the best form of measuring your ingredients. If you don't have a kitchen scale, fluff your flour, scoop flour with a spoon into a measuring cup and level off.
Don't burn the brown butter: Once the brown butter starts to pop, foam, and form specs at the bottom of the pan, remove it. Otherwise you could burn it and it will end up tasting bitter.
Don't over mix: Using a spatula instead of a hand mixer reduces the chances of overmixing, but once your ingredients come together, stop mixing.
Don't over bake: Start checking the cookies at 10 minutes to ensure you don't over bake. You want to make sure you end up with chewy center and crispy edges.
High quality chocolate: I like using Ghirardelli, Lindt, or Guittard because I know they all taste wonderful in recipes. Here's more info on baking with the right chocolate.
Use Large Eggs: Make sure your eggs are large, because that could change the consistency of the batter.
Chill cookie dough: If you'd like to achieve thicker cookies, chill your cookie dough for at least 30 minutes.
FAQ
Brown butter instead of regular or melted butter creates a deep and nutty flavor that gives off notes of caramel.
To achieve those delicious pools of melted chocolate, use high quality bars of chocolate that you chop. Since chocolate chips contain less cocoa butter, they are made to keep their shape and they don’t melt very well in a cookie.
I’ve used a 1.5 tablespoon cookie scoop as well as a 5 tablespoon cookie scoop and both work perfectly. Just make sure to leave enough space between each cookie if you decide to use a larger cookie scoop.
To get round cookies, immediately after removing them from the oven, take a spoon and push the edges into a perfect circle. You can also use a large circle cookie cutter to create a perfectly shaped cookie
YES! Absolutely. After scooping them into balls, you can place them (separated) in the freezer for about 15-20 minutes, then place them all in a ziploc bag.
When you're ready to bake one up, set the oven to 325 degrees and bake for a few minutes longer than the recipe calls for. Just keep an eye out on the edges. Once they're crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, pull them out of the oven. Tessa from Handle The Heat has a wonderful blog post all about freezing and baking your frozen cookie dough.
Brown Butter Recipes to Try:
- Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Blondies
- Biscoff Blondies
- Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookies
- Caramel Oatmeal Bars
📖 Recipe
Brown Butter Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
- 1¼ cup (150g) all purpose flour see note
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ¾ cup (150g) dark brown sugar
- ¼ cup (50g) granulated sugar
- 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
- 1½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3.5 oz. dark chocolate chopped
- ½-¾ cup pecans chopped (and toasted, optional)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350° F.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
For the Brown Butter
- Melt butter in a medium sauce pan on medium heat. Stir the butter to make sure it melts evenly. Once the butter is completely melted, it will start to foam up. Continue stirring the butter. As it cooks, it will start to change into a deeper color. This could take 6-8 minutes.
- You'll start to notice a nutty aroma and the butter will begin to have brown specs at the bottom of the pan. Continue stirring and remove from the heat and pour into a heat-proof bowl and let cool slightly before continuing with recipe. The entire process of browning butter from start to finish should not take more than 10 minutes on medium heat.
For the Cookies
- In a separate bowl, Add flour, cornstarch, salt, baking soda, and baking powder to a bowl, whisk, then set aside.
- Once brown butter is slightly cooled, add the sugars (both brown and granulated) into the bowl of the brown butter, and mix with a spatula. Add the egg + egg yolk and vanilla extract and stir until combined.
- Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Add the chocolate and pecans and mix.
- Optional: Chill the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes (this will help develop more flavor, and reduce spreading).
- Scoop cookie dough using a large cookie scoop. Place cookie balls on baking sheet, making sure to spread them apart at least 2".
- Bake for 10-11 minutes, depending on desired crisp. I like mine crisp on the edges but chewy on the inside, so I only bake for 10 minutes.
- Let cool for a few minutes on baking sheet and then transfer to cooling rack.
Notes
- If you don't have a scale to measure your flour, instead you can use the fluff and scoop method. Fluff the flour with a spoon, then spoon the flour into a measuring cup, then using a butter knife, level off the flour. This way you won't over measure.
- If you happen to over measure your flour, and once you've added all your ingredients, you find that the mixture is too crumbly, dry and not coming together like cookie dough, just add one tablespoon of milk at a time until the dough is a perfect soft and pliable texture and easily scoopable.
Amira says
OK, this recipe is DIVINE! I am not a baker by any means, but it was super easy to follow, and turned out AMAZING! It made 17 cookies, I think, and they were gone in about 20 minutes once my kiddoes discovered them. Make them. Today!!!!
Kima says
Thank you so much for making the recipe and for leaving a review, Amira! I'm so happy your family loved these cookies. It's one of my favorite! 🙂