Somehow, I never tire of cookies. No matter how many hundreds, maybe even thousands, of batches I’ve made in my life I still crave them regularly. That’s why I’m always experimenting and tweaking cookie recipes in the kitchen, especially chocolate chip cookies. Sometimes all I want is an ultra rich, gooey, and chewy chocolate chunk recipe.
These Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies are absolute perfection because they are loaded with that rich and nutty brown butter, salty-sweet, butterscotch, and pure chocolate flavors. Chocolate chunk cookies can easily become too ooey and gooey (too much of a good thing exists!) so I made sure these were the perfect balance of gooey, chewy, and crunchy.
I’ve included tons of tips below so your cookies turn out perfectly! Best of all? These cookies require no electric mixer required.
How to Make Perfect Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Browning the Butter
Follow the directions closely for browning the butter. It’s super simple, just be sure not to walk away from it. It quickly goes from browned to burnt.
Do You Have to Use Bread Flour?
The bread flour in this recipe helps make the cookies ultra chewy and thick. It’s my go-to trick for incredible cookies so I always have some on hand. If you don’t have any feel free to use only all-purpose flour, though your cookies might lose some chewiness.
Sugar
A high ratio of dark brown sugar makes these cookies moist, chewy, and rich in flavor. I love it. Again if you don’t have any on hand, you can use light brown sugar but your cookies will lose a little bit of awesomeness.
Chocolate
This recipe calls for both regular semisweet chocolate chips as well as chocolate baking wafers. I used the Guittard brand of semisweet chocolate wafers. You can also find these specifically at Whole Foods, Williams Sonoma, or Sur la Table. You could also use the Valrhona brand of wafers (they call theirs “chocolate feves”). They don’t hold their shape like chocolate chips do. Instead they turn into little chocolate puddles that are a delight to bite into. If you can’t find them feel free to use 2 cups of semisweet chocolate chips instead.
Sea Salt
This is optional, but you can add a sprinkling of flaky finishing sea salt to the cookies right after pulling them out of the oven.
The Best Baking Tips:
I always use a kitchen scale to weigh my ingredients, especially flour, and an oven thermometer to ensure baking accuracy. Incorrectly measured flour can lead to cookies that are tough, crumbly, dry, too thick, or just blah. Most ovens run a little hot or cold, so checking the temperature with an oven thermometer ensures the best cookies possible.
Chilling the Dough
It might be a little annoying to see that I call for chilling the dough for a minimum of 24 hours in this recipe. But believe me, it makes a big difference here. Both the taste and texture improve during this time. Think of it as a marinating time where everything just gets better and better!!
Size
I’ve found these are best made as big cookies, using a 3-Tablespoon large cookie scoop. This provides the perfect texture: crisp at the edges, slightly gooey in the center, and chewy throughout. If you want to make smaller cookies, use a 1.5-Tablespoon cookie scoop and reduce the baking time to about 10 minutes.
Why Use a Cookie Scoop?
Using a stainless steel spring-loaded cookie scoop when portioning out cookie dough is one of the KEYS to beautiful, uniform, evenly-shaped and evenly-baked cookies. My cookie scoop is one of my most frequently used kitchen gadgets. A spring-loaded scoop saves you *so much time* in forming the balls of dough. When using a scoop, you ensure each ball is evenly sized so the cookies bake evenly, meaning you don’t have any small overbaked cookies or large underbaked cookies. Learn more about Cookie Scoops and how to use them here!
Make Ahead
You can make the dough ahead of time and refrigerate it for up to 3 days. I like to scoop balls of dough onto a small baking sheet and freeze them until solid. Then I transfer the frozen balls to a ziptop bag and store in the freezer. Let the balls come to room temperature before baking. This way I can bake off small batches of fresh cookies whenever I feel like it! Check out my full post on how to freeze cookie dough and bake from frozen here.
This recipe was the September 2020 selection for our monthly baking challenge. Every month you can join a challenge by baking the recipe and snapping a photo for a chance to win prizes! Learn more about my monthly baking challenges here. Check out everyone’s cookies:
My jeans will never fit again. SO DELICIOUS, AS ALWAYS!
These cookies are amazing! They’re everything I want in a cookie, soft, chewy, crispy, melty. I will make these over and over again!!
I really loved the flavor of these cookies! The browned butter takes it to a higher level. It also liked the detail on how to brown butter since it was my first time and made it very easy! I was wondering if I should buy some sea salt and was glad I did. That addition really topped it off. My only problem was that my cookies wound up thicker than the pictures. I made my second batch slightly smaller but had the same result. Could something be wrong with my oven, or I have them baking on the wrong shelf? They came out more cake-y which was fine but not what I was picturing. Thanks!
I love the brown butter in these, they were so delicious!
This recipe came out sooo delicious!! The brown butter is definitely a game changer! I will absolutely be making these cookies again!!
Absolute perfection! Best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had! ❤️
Love this recipe. Just for fun I made the brown butter cookie recipe and the ultimate chocolate chip cookie and am having family and friends taste both and pick their favorite. So far it is a tie. It is hard to pick a winner because they are both so good!
This is the best chewy ccc recipe I have ever made! I could smell the butterscotch when I mixed the sugars with the hot melted brown butter and then I smelled the butterscotch again as the cookies were baking. I never smell ccc baking with other recipes that I’ve tried. Most importantly, the butterscotch flavor is much stronger in this recipe. I made these for work and my co-workers loved them and have requested that I make them again. I love this recipe! Tessa, I’m so glad that you chose to include this recipe in your baking challenge because otherwise I would never have baked this recipe due to the bread flour ingredient. I was debating whether I wanted to purchase bread flour or not and decided to buy it because I love and want super chewy cookies. I also purchased Maldon sea salt to sprinkle on top. These ccc were decadent and delicious! Thank you Tessa for this great recipe!
These are sooo tasty! The brown butter flavor is absolutely worth the bit of effort. I didn’t have bread flour, so used all, all-purpose, and they are wonderful!
Love them
They smell as good baked as unbaked.Love this recipe
Absolutely delicious!
These cookies taste amazing! And they’re surprisingly easy to make, the only semi-difficult part is browning the butter, which I didn’t even find that hard! Definitely 5/5 stars… will make again!
Another fabulous recipe by Tessa! The browned butter adds yummy flavor and beautiful color to these cookies. Definitely a keeper recipe!
dough very wet, cookies came out flat, seemed like there was too much fat in the recipe. I bought the book and followed your class also weighed all the ingredients and cookies were a flop
These cookies are perfect! The best part of these cookies was definitely the brown butter.
These cookies are very good! Would highly recommend this recipe!
Love this recipe! Worth the time to brown the butter, results in taste are amazing!
Delicious recipe. Will definitely be part of our monthly baking rotation!!!
yummm
Super yummy recipe! Only downside is the 24hr chill time because it’s sooooo hard to wait to eat these beauties!
I personally like the bakery style chocolate chip cookies better. I probably burned the butter
These are my new favorite chocolate chip cookies! The rich flavor that comes from the brown butter (and letting the dough marinate!) is beyond compare. I was worried at first that taking the step of browning the butter would make these cookies difficult to make or would add on a bunch of time to the process, but that was not the case at all! I highly recommend these cookies to anyone and everyone!
Seriously such a good recipe!! The first time I made them I missed the all purpose flour so the first batch was an ugly soupy mess hahah. The next batch I did the correct amount. I used all all purpose flour since I didn’t have bread flour. I brought them to work and all my coworkers said they wanted these cookies for Christmas (and I bring a lot of cookies to work!). Definitely going to save this recipe!
These are so tasty! Lots of flavor! I think we only have 5 or 6 left, so they were a big hit at our house. Thank you, Tessa.
Perfect recipe, thank you!!!
This recipe was amazing! The taste of this cookies is wonderful!! My family loved them!
I loved this recipe!!!! The taste of this cookies are amazing! I really cant wait to have my book!
Excellent recipe. I measured everything by weight as Tessa recommended and they came out delicious! I did not have chocolate wafers and I’m glad I didn’t. One bag of chocolate chips was plenty. I prefer to be able to taste more of the cookie part instead of all chocolate in my mouth.
I loved these cookies even though I could not really make them with the bread flour and the wafers, they still came out great. Obviously, they did not even last for a day!
Great recipe, family loved them
These are the perfect “classic” chocolate chip cookies. Crispy edges, gooey in the middle, that incredible nutty, toffee flavor from the browned butter. Incredible!
Best Chocolate Chip Recipe EVER!!!
Love these cookies. I even shared the recipe with a co worker who make them and their family said they were the best ever.
These cookies are absolutely delightful. The brown butter flavor compliments the chocolate so well and they make for the most beautiful cookies. Such a fun spin on a classic chocolate chip cookie! I’ll definitely be making these again!
These cookies were delightful! The brown butter flavor just goes so well with the chocolate and they make for the most beautiful cookies. Such a fun spin on chocolate chip cookies! I’ll definitely be making these again.
These cookies are delicious and very easy to make. They also taste great without chilling if you’re in a rush. I added flaky sea salt on top, and they were a huge hit.
Absolutely delicious! Loved making this cookie with the zoom class.
I loved this recipe! The flavour of beurre noisette was amazing!
With the help of your tutorial, I made a successful batch of these browned butter chocolate chip cookies. Chewy, flavorful, a very good cookie.
My family, friends, and I absolutely love this recipe as the cookies are soft and chewy and not too sweet. But my cookies are a bit too greasy and tend to stick together after a while when I pile them up. I often send these cookies to friends and put them in paper bags but the bags get soaked in oil from the cookies. What am I doing wrong?
These were so good. If you love a chewy cookie these are it. I couldn’t find the melting chocolates so just used chocolate chunks, still tasted good.
Scrumptious! Browning the butter is a bit of a nuisance but the flavor, color and texture are worth it.
So soft and delicious!! Will def be making again soon
Seriously the best chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever made. And probably the best homemade cookie I’ve ever tasted! And definitely the most stunning looking cookie.
Ironically I’ve always been a fan of less chips in my chocolate chip cookies. This recipe calls for chips AND wafers, so I was concerned it was overkill. It wasn’t. I especially loved the gooey chocolate wafers the recipe calls for. Don’t skip them! But they’re hard to find. Go to their website to search for a location near you to buy them.
Another great addition – the finishing salt! Those little bursts of salt really brought out the flavor and helped balance out the sweetness. My partner, however, did not like the salt so that addition might not be for everyone.
I’ve always shied away from making cookies because they never turned out right. After purchasing Tessa’s chocolate chip cookie recipe book I now know why! It’s very informative! And this recipe turned out perfect. The butter browning step was a little intimidating. But I can’t wait until I try it again since I was a little worried it was going to burn, I probably didn’t let it brown quite enough.
Followed the recipe to T! Yummy chewy cookies! All loves it!
These cookies are delicious and so easy to make!! The browned butter gives the cookies a different flavor, and they’re amazing!
Always a treat to make cookies without busting out the mixer. Easy recipe, yummy cookies!!
DELICIOUS! I didn’t have the sea salt to sprinkle on top but it would have made an already amazing cookie even better
Soooo good. My family loves these. The cookies look as good as they taste, crispy around the edges while gooey in the middle. I am going to make another batch of dough and freeze so we can have fresh cookies when we need dessert or a snack.
Best cookies ever. Used the new cookbook and can’t wait to try more recipes!!!
So tender and delicious! The browned butter gives the cookie a delicious toffee-like flavor. Super rich and decadent!! Will make again and again!
I was a little unsure about the browning butter part and how it would all mix together, and skeptical about waiting a full 24 hours to bake them, but they baked up beautifully and taste delicious!
Amazing cookies! I shared with friends and got so many compliments!
Easy to follow that turns into amazing results! Best cookie recipe I tried
Basically the best cookies I made! I adjusted and added some fix ins and it came out perfectly!
These cookies came out yummy. I like the two sizes of chocolate (chips) as it gave the cookie texture. Browning the butter is something I have done in the past and was perfect for this recipe.
These are delicious! The brown butter gives the cookies a caramel flavor. These cookies are really good!! When I make them again, I’d probably reduce the chocolate by 1/2 cup.
So chewy and chocolatey. A wonderful balance between sweet and salty and the brown butter is worth it! Gives it that extra depth of flavour. I’ll definitely be making these again
Amazing! I was able to make them with Tessa in her online class, which was super fun! The cookies got lots of compliments from my family and friends. I loved that they were not too thin.