Prepare yourself people. This is my third brown-butter post in a row and it’s not going to stop anytime soon. I am on this brown butter bandwagon hard and not getting off anytime soon. If you’ve experienced the amazingness that is brown butter, I’m sure you won’t mind these posts. If you are still a skeptic, I’m going to continue posting about brown butter until my hands can’t whisk anymore so I suggest you get onboard. I made brown butter snickerdoodles and brown butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies this week that I still have to post about one of these days.

First, Merry Belated Christmas. Hopefully everyone had a nice holiday. I know I did. I went home to the hood for the holidays and got to spend some time with the family, which is always nice. I have some pictures of how Skip and my Grandpa and I wore matching flannel for Christmas at the end of this post. I also got boots from LLBean which means I am slowly turning into Skip. Before you know it, people are going to be “womp-womp”ing me at the end of my jokes. I’m not ready for that yet.

Anyways, I figured I would try something a little different this weekend with brown butter. I came across this recipe on one of the blogs I follow, Sally’s Baking Addiction. If I did it again, I might use mini M&Ms and maybe throw some mini chocolate chips in there. The one thing I will say about brown butter cookies is I struggle with letting the butter cool and then chilling the dough before scooping it. We all know, patience is a virtue I do not posses. The problem is, if you don’t let it chill, sometimes the mix-ins like M&Ms or chocolate chips don’t stick as well when you’re trying to roll balls of dough. Still, I think these cookies came out pretty good even with my impatience.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar (or light brown sugar)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup pretzel pieces
• 3/4 cup M&Ms

Step 1: In a skillet over medium-high heat, melt the butter. Whisk constantly as it cooks. It will get really foamy at one point and start to turn dark golden brown with a nice nutty aroma. Remove from the heat and transfer to a heatproof bowl. Put it in the fridge for at least an hour until it is solid again. This is a different approach to previous brown butter cookies but seems to work well in this recipe.

Step 2: Cream the solid brown butter with the brown sugar and granulated sugar until creamy. Add in egg and vanilla and mix well.

Step 3: Add in the flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt and mix until well blended. I find that with the brown butter recipes I need to stop a few more times to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl.

Step 4: Obviously, taste the dough at this point (so good). Add in crushed pretzel pieces. In my ghetto kitchen fashion, I used the gatorade bottle I had on hand to nurse my girls’ night hangover to smash some mini pretzels up. Crushed it. Literally.

Step 5: Add both the pretzels and M&Ms into the batter and mix until evenly incorporated. Chill the dough for at least an hour. I put it in the freezer for about 12 minutes before I got impatient.

Step 6: Scoop even-size balls of dough onto a parchment or sil-pat-lined baking sheet. I found I had to roll these by hand to get them to stick together better. Bake at 350 degrees for about 8-9 minutes. When you take these out, let them sit on the tray to finish cooking outside the oven for a few minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.

I like these a lot. Obviously, I made them. But I am just high on brown butter right now so everything tastes good. I think this is a solid brown butter cookie base to try with other mix-ins.

It’s funny, when we were little at Christmas, we weren’t allowed to wake our parents up until 7am to open presents. My brother and sister and I would always be up much earlier than that so we would play on this miniature billards set my brother had in his room that was made for like ants. Now as grown-ups, we have to settle that 10am seems like a decent time that we would all be up and semi-showered for gifts. And  now we get grown-up gifts like work clothes, sneakers, and vanilla beans. Yeah, Santa still knows me pretty well.

Skip uploaded all of our home videos to this site online so we can easily access them. I was watching Christmas 1991 tonight, and Santa left a note on the mantle which said “Thanks for the cookies, the soda, Rudolph loves the oranges, ho ho ho Santa.” So in case you were wondering, Santa has been enjoying caffeine free Diet Coke since the mid-80s. The Easter Bunny as well.

Skip and Grandpa have matching light-up hats for all the holidays. I was happily included in this picture for being part of the red-flannel club. I’m also working on getting my Grandpa to do the thumbs up in every pic. Also to say YOLO often.

 

My Grandpa likes to heckle me a lot. It’s part of the price I have to pay for being the favorite grandchild. I call him every night when I am parking in Southie because he is my parking spot good luck charm. He thinks I have a wicked Southie accent, which I do not. But I got him this sticker because this is how he thinks I say Boston and he’s already stuck it up on his kitchen wall.

 

To end the holiday week on a great note, we had a girl’s night in Southie last night. First starting at the new restaurant Blue Dragon by the seaport. Every other table around us ordered this cookie skillet for dessert, and we had wine left to drink, so we had to order one. Within 5 minutes of this picture being taken, this was demolished. It fueled us to continue on to the next bar and drink some more vino. I wish I could take this cookie skillet and turn its flavor into the best regular cookie ever. Maybe that will be a challenge for 2014. Girls night also ended in drunk pinky promises that we would book a Vegas trip to see Britney Spears soon. And since pinky promises are the real deal, I will be planning some Vegas itineraries this week.

 

 

Happy Early New Year everyone. If you’re like me, you’ll be enjoying some champagne in the comfort of your own home probably falling asleep early but waking up for a few minutes to see the ball drop. My resolution for 2014? You guessed it. More brown butter! And some yoga. Happy New Year from The Salted Cookie!