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This Salted Butter Crunch Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe is better than any bakery cookie. Browned butter and buttery homemade toffee makes these cookies irresistible.
Love the sound of Butter Crunch? Make sure to try my original Butter Crunch Cookies too!
If you are looking to make a cookie to really impress, look no further than this Butter Crunch Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe! The base of the cookie is a spin on everyone’s favorite Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies. But mixed into the cookie dough is a sweet, homemade toffee that adds a buttery crunch to the chewy cookie. Take it a step even further and sprinkle some flaked sea salt on top. Absolute heaven!
Butter Crunch = Toffee
So the “butter crunch” portion of this recipe is my version of a simple homemade toffee. It only requires 2 ingredients, a heavy saucepan, and a candy thermometer. You will need a baking sheet to spread it out on when you’re done so it can cool and you can easily break it into bits! It’s a really fun ingredient to know how to make on your own.
Ingredients You’ll Need:
- Salted butter
- Light brown sugar
- Granulated sugar
- Large eggs
- Vanilla extract
- Kosher salt
- Baking soda
- All purpose flour
- Semi-sweet chocolate chips
- Flaked sea salt as a garnish
Homemade Toffee Bits Are Easy To Make!
For the “Butter Crunch” portion of this recipe you will be making your own homemade toffee candy. It’s simple to make, just make sure to go low and slow to bring your butter and sugar up to temperature. The worst thing you could do is turn up the heat to get it going quickly. This will only cause the toffee to burn. Be patient and trust your candy thermometer!
How To Make Brown Butter:
Browning butter is so easy! All you do is:
- Melt your butter over medium-low heat.
- Bring the butter to a boil and swirl the pan continuously (or stir continuously) until the butter foams up and becomes a deep amber color.
- It will take a few minutes to start to brown, but once the butter begins to brown it will happen quick so don’t walk away!
- Once the color is a deep amber, remove it immediately from the heat and allow it to cool.
- For the Toffee: Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- In a small, heavy saucepan over low heat bring the butter and sugar to a boil, stirring occasionally. Bring the mixture to 285°F on a candy thermometer, the mixture will become a deep amber color. Immediately remove the pan from the heat, cool for 1 minute and spread the mixture evenly onto the prepared pan. Allow the toffee to cool completely and then using a knife, break it into small pieces. You will have a rounded cup of toffee pieces.
- Make the Cookie Dough: In a medium saucepan over medium heat melt the butter and bring it to a boil. Once it starts boiling, swirl the pan, or stir constantly until the butter passes the foamy phase and becomes a deep amber color.
- Remove from heat and allow butter to cool for 20 minutes. While the butter is cooling, preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- Add the light brown sugar, granulated sugar, eggs, vanilla, baking soda, and salt into the cooled butter and stir to combine using a rubber spatula or wooden spoon.
- Stir in the flour until the dough comes together and the ingredients are evenly incorporated.
- Mix in the chocolate chips and toffee pieces.
- Using a large cookie scoop (3 tablespoon sized), scoop the dough out onto the lined baking sheet, 2 inches apart.
- Bake the cookies for 10 – 12 minutes until the edges are lightly golden and the centers are just set.
- Remove the baking sheet from the oven and allow the cookie to cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.
- If desired, sprinkle a small amount of flaky sea salt on top of the cookies as they are cooling.
- Make sure your butter is cooled. This will prevent the cookies from spreading, and it will also prevent the chocolate chips from melting into the dough before baking!
- Break up the toffee coarsely. You don’t want dust, you want pieces of toffee so you can really taste it in the cookie!
- If you notice spreading of your toffee chocolate chip cookies when you remove them from the oven this can happen when you use toffee. The toffee will melt a little during the baking process, and if the bits are close to the edge that can cause spreading. All you do is use a spatula to form the cookies back into the desired shape as soon as they come out of the oven. As soon as they start to cool they won’t be able to be reformed so work quickly!
- You can absolutely chill this dough if you would really like to enhance the flavors. An overnight deepens the nutty taste the brown butter gives the cookies. You don’t need to chill the dough, however. That’s the beauty of using browned butter: it adds a more complex flavor to the dough without the extra overnight step!
- This recipe is written so it can be a one bowl cookie dough. If you would prefer you can easily mix the ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.
Why Salted Butter?
I use salted butter in almost all of my baking. I know that the “experts” say to use unsalted so you are able to control the exact amount of salt in your dish, or baked treat. This does make a lot of sense, especially to those who are salt sensitive. Different brands of butter can have varying amounts of salt included. But with all that said, I just prefer salted butter. To me it tastes better and I prefer it. I test all my recipes with salted butter because that’s what I buy for my home. And in these cookies it works perfectly because that slightly saltiness that the butter adds in the cookie as well as the toffee really balances out the flavors.
How To Store:
Store these toffee chocolate chip cookies airtight at room temperature for up t 3 days for best freshness. They will still be safe to eat after 3 days, but in my opinion a 5 day old just makes me sad.
Absolutely these cookies can be frozen. If you find that you won’t be able to finish a whole batch, go ahead and put them in a zip-top bag and freeze them for up to 30 days for best freshness. You can also freeze the cookie dough if you want to make ahead and bake when needed. Hop over to my full post on How To Freeze Cookie Dough for all the details!
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