When it comes to baking or making pastries, you will need patience, technique and quality ingredients to make the best desserts. There is an art to layering flavors to complement each other, and precision is needed for measuring ingredients. Most often, I weigh my ingredients like flour and sugar and use volume measurements for liquid ingredients unless directed otherwise. As for quality, European butter and chocolate are simply perfect to work with, and if cooking with alcohol, use a fine quality that you would drink. As a quick reminder, DO NOT EAT RAW COOKIE DOUGH. Many people think it is the raw eggs that you want to avoid, but it is raw FLOUR that you want to avoid because of E. Coli bacteria.
Ingredients:
280 grams Salted Butter (browned)
150 grams Granulated Sugar
200 grams Brown Sugar
2 large Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla + 1 TBS Bourbon
357 grams Flour
3/4 tsp Kosher Salt
2.5 tsp Baking Soda
360-480 grams Semisweet Chocolate *Can use Dark Chocolate
1. Brown the butter in a medium-large saucepan, stirring constantly over medium-high heat until you reach a deep honey color and it should smell nutty. Remove pan from heat and pour butter into a bowl. Put the bowl in the freezer or refrigerator, stirring and checking the temperature frequently. The brown butter is ready to use when it reaches 74 degrees, or room temperature.
2. While the butter is cooling, mix your dry ingredients. Whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda until combined thoroughly.
3. Once your butter is 74 degrees, you can mix it with the granulated sugar and the brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and the bourbon. Mix until well combined.
4. Alternate adding flour and egg until just combined. DO NOT OVERMIX. Fold in chocolate chips.
5. Refrigerate cookie dough for two hours to develop the flavors.
6. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.
7. Use an ice cream scoop or roll out cookie dough balls. Slightly flatten and sprinkle with flaky sea salt. Give two inches of room between cookies for spreading. You can also freeze the cookie dough rounds raw, and simply defrost and bake for anytime fresh cookies.
8. Bake for 5 minutes. Lower the temperature to 375 degrees and bake for an additional 3-5 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies are golden brown.
9. Cool and enjoy.