I occasionally love to dabble and adjust my cookie recipe, because I love how tweaking an ingredient or a technique in the recipe can result in dramatically different kinds of cookies. In the case of these cookies, I was trying to go with this super toasty, brown butter-forward cookie studded with chocolate, cacao nibs, and toffee bits! I did go through a few variations on this recipe before I came up with the end product! One thing I was looking for was a cookie that spread a decent amount, because I want those caramelized, crinkly, crispy edges, but a gooey center. One version of this recipe, I used all brown sugar, no granulated, but what I found was that while the flavor was delicious, the additional moisture in the brown sugar, specifically from the molasses, caused the dough to not spread much to at all, and because I did not freeze the dough prior to baking them, the cookies themselves almost boiled as they baked, resulting in cookies that kind of dried out. So for this recipe, I made two tweaks – equal parts brown and granulated sugar, just for that molasses flavor but the right kind of sugar to get that caramelization and dough spreading, and I froze the dough sufficiently after I scooped and portioned each cookie ball, and baked them from frozen so that the middle of these cookies were fudge-y and soft. I was fairly happy with how much the cookies spread:

From a technical standpoint, this cookie requires patience more than anything else. The butter does need to be browned, so you are looking for butter that is like the color of honey, and the butter itself needs to be refrigerated sufficiently before you add the other ingredients, or else you risk the chocolate and toffee bits melting into the warm cookie. I also added milk powder to the brown butter, which toasts it and gives an even nuttier toasted flavor to the final cookie dough. Then you won’t even have a chocolate chip cookie at that point, but instead a lightly chocolate-flavored one, which is still delicious, but maybe a lot less textural. I did use tonka bean in the cookie dough as well, but tonka can be hard to procure, so you can totally sub that out with vanilla extract instead. I added a combination of dark chocolate, cacao nibs, and the toffee bits(I used the Heath toffee pieces) at the very end of the recipe, just to guarantee that the dough is cooled down enough so nothing accidentally melts in there. Cacao nibs are a bit of an unusual ingredient on the surface, since they are very bitter, but I love how they accentuate the chocolate, and the crunchy texture works beautifully against the gooey cookie, while tempering the sweetness too. I will warn again that there is a lot of downtime here, because you have to cool down the butter, then cool down the dough, then after scooping and portioning it(I recommend using a scale for this part to get consistent cookie sizes), you still need to freeze the dough solid – this step is important to achieve that gooey centered cookie! If you choose to make them, these cookies are some of the best I have personally ever made, and I guarantee that they are worth 100% the wait!

Makes 24 to 28 cookies:
2 sticks unsalted butter
2 tbsp milk powder
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
a pinch of salt
.5g grated tonka bean
,5g ground cinnamon
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup dark chocolate chips
1/3 cup cacao nibs
1/2 cup buttery toffee bits

In a pot, heat up the unsalted butter and milk powder on medium heat until the butter reaches a color similar to honey or amber. Take the pot off heat and pour the brown butter, scraping the milk solids off the bottom of the pot, into a bowl. Add to that bowl your eggs and egg yolk, the brown sugar, granulated sugar, the salt, tonka bean/vanilla, and cinnamon. Whisk all of those ingredients together until they are combined and allow the mixture to cool down to room temperature. Combine the other ingredients together and fold them through the butter-egg mixture to form your dough. Refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour and the scoop the dough into roughly 50g balls – you should have about 28 dough balls. Freeze the dough balls for at least 2 hours. Take the dough balls and place them on lined sheet trays, spacing them 2 inches apart. Bake the still-frozen dough balls at 375 degrees F for 12 minutes, rotating the trays halfway through the baking time. Allow the cookies to cool before attempting to remove and serve.