Brown Butter Snickerdoodles Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Does browning butter make a difference in cookies? ›

In his recipe, he made the ingenious discovery that browning the butter before adding it to the mixture would give the cookies a much more pronounced nuttiness.

Begin stirring to move the butter around as it melts. Once melted, the butter will begin to foam and sizzle around the edges. Keep stirring. In about 5–8 minutes from when you started (depending on the amount of butter you used), the butter will turn golden brown.

The Problem: Your Oven Is Too Hot

If your cookies repeatedly turn out flat, no matter the recipe, chances are your oven is too hot. Here's what's happening. The butter melts super quickly in a too-hot oven before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure.

We recommend using a shiny pan with a silver finish or a cermaic coated pan because it allows you to see the transition as the butter melts down and changes color from light to dark golden brown more easily.

Check for doneness: To check if the butter is browned to your liking, while the butter is in the saucepan, clear away some of the foam and spoon a little of the butter onto a white plate. Account for evaporation: Brown butter reduces in volume by 20-25% as water content cooks off.

Under-browned butter won't carry as much flavor, and won't bring that lovely nuttiness to your bake. It will look lighter as you'll see in the photo below. Over-browned butter will taste bitter or even burnt, and be darker brown in color, as you can see in the photo below.

Don't stop stirring.

Constantly stirring the butter allows the heat from the bottom of the pan to be evenly distributed and will prevent the solids from burning before the rest of the butter has browned.

Use room temp ingredients.

After browning your butter, make sure it's cool enough to touch before adding it to your dough. I usually set it aside to cool for 10-15 minutes before making the recipe.

Adding too little butter can cause the cookies to be tough and crumbly. You should use unsalted butter to control the salt content, but if you only have salted on hand, reduce the amount of added salt accordingly. Sugar sweetens the cookies and makes them an enticing golden brown.

Why are my Snickerdoodles flat? ›

Why are my snickerdoodles flat? Snickerdoodles can come out flat if 1) the leaveners you used (for this recipe, it's both the baking soda and the cream of tartar) are on the old side and no longer work, and 2) if you baked them at a lower temperature.

Too much flour in your brown butter chocolate chip cookies can make them dry, tough, crumbly, or too thick, none of which are good.

Brown butter isn't one of those things you can start cooking and walk away from. It requires your total attention, which means stirring the butter every once in a while. Without stirring, the butter has more potential to cook unevenly, and the milk solids can stick to the bottom of the pan and eventually burn.

Once you notice browning (and you smell that beautiful nutty aroma of browned butter), remove from heat quickly and pour into a large, heatproof bowl. Allow butter to cool at room temperature until no longer warm to the touch before proceeding with the recipe.

Just like regular butter, browned butter (also called just brown butter) improves the texture of baked goods and adds richness to savory dishes. But unlike regular butter, brown butter has a distinctive, bold flavor that otherwise can't be recreated.

The brown butter offers a subtle nutty flavor that blends perfectly with the molasses in the brown sugar to give the cookie that amazing rich slightly smoky and nutty toffee flavor. Baking your cookies at a higher temperature will cook the outside of the cookie faster before the inside cooks too much.

Unsalted butter gives you complete control of the overall flavor of your recipe. This is especially important in certain baked goods where the pure, sweet cream flavor of butter is key (butter cookies or pound cakes). As it pertains to cooking, unsalted butter lets the real, natural flavor of your foods come through.

Overheating the butter can lead to a burnt taste, as well as affect the texture of your cookies. It's absolutely essential to melt the butter slowly and carefully. If you're using a stovetop, keep it on low heat and stir frequently to prevent the butter from overheating.