Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Pretzel Cookies

Oh man, today's a great day on the blog. It's a day where I get to talk about three awesome things: brown butter, chocolate chip cookies, and pretzels.

Last week, I talked about my mom, and today - I honor my dad with this recipe using his favorite ingredient ever that's not Diet Coke - the pretzel. And, if you've never made brown butter before- wowee, you are in for a treat. If you thought butter was good... you are going to love this take on it. It's basically like infusing your cookies with a deep, caramel richness. Yes.

This recipe is also an original twist on a great base recipe my dear friend Jessica passed on to me. I've also used it as the base for the awesomely chewy and soft Disney World Sugar Cookies. And these aren't gluten-free but they could be if you used GF flour, xantham gum, and gluten-free pretzels.

BROWN BUTTER CHOCOLATE CHIP PRETZEL COOKIES

(Makes about 2 dozen 2in cookies)

Ingredients

• 1 cup of butter (we used Kerrygold)
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar (or a little less than 1 cup)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 and 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup crushed pretzel thins (or 3/4 cup crushed pretzel sticks)

Directions

1. To make brown butter, the process is fairly simple and the results are utterly delicious. Place your 1 cup of butter (generally 2 sticks) in a saucepan over to medium-low heat and allow it to melt. Then move the butter around, swirling slowly on low heat for about 10-15 minutes or until butter visually turns brown and you begin to smell a strong caramel flavor (the goodness!). Turn off heat and place brown butter in your mixing bowl and allow it to cool off to room temperature before adding other ingredients.
2. While the butter cools, go ahead and mix your dry ingredients - the flour, the baking soda, and salt - in a mixing bowl and set aside.
3. When the butter is ready to go, use a mixer to start combining your wet ingredients starting first with the two sugars, then the eggs, then the vanilla.
4. At this point, work your flour mixture in using 1/4-1/2 cup intervals to make sure it's carefully incorporated.
5. Once all the flour's been incorporated, add your chocolate chips and pretzel bits by gently folding them in with a spatula.
6. Refrigerate your dough for an hour.
7. Just before you're ready to bake, preheat your oven to 375F.
8. Spoon your dough out with a rounded teaspoon measure to make cookies that are about 2" in diameter. If you want larger cookies, you can use a rounded tablespoon instead (which for the measurements above will yield 12 cookies instead of 24). For both sizes, you can fit about 6 per sheet.
9. Bake for 8-12 minutes depending on your oven and pull out once the cookies have puffed down just a bit and the edges look golden.
10. Lastly, serve to pretzel and chocolate lovers alike!