Brown Butter Rum Chocolate Chip Cookies

Brown Butter Rum Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yes, you read that correctly — browned butter rum. You see, I was going to make chocolate chip cookies from my favorite standby recipe — America’s Test Kitchen’s Chocolate Chip Cookies (subscription required for the ATK site; another adaptation here), in case you’re wondering — and I decided that I was going to be a bit rebellious.

First, I decided that since the original ATK Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe called for melted butter, I’d go a step further and brown it. Because, you know, there’s nothing that browned butter can’t make better, right?  (Except for maybe my fondness of double negatives.)

And then I figured since I like salted caramel so very much, I’d say hell to the standard baking wisdom to use unsalted butter and use salted butter. (Also? That’s what I have on hand at the moment. You use what you’ve got.)

And as I was in the midst of everything I discovered that I was out of vanilla. And I know from previous experience that a chocolate chip cookie without vanilla extract is a poor, sad thing indeed. Even with browned butter. Thinking quickly, I grabbed the nearest substitute I could think of. Dark rum. Cruzan Black Strap rum, to be specific.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not much of a drinker so I can’t comment on how this rum stacks up to other rums — though here’s a review by someone who knows what they’re talking about better than I do — I do rather like Cruzan Black Strap because it has this awesome aroma of molasses. It’s pretty heavenly.

Then I figured that I’d throw all caution to the wind and make the batter in a saucepan rather than in a bowl or mixer. I figure I needed to brown the butter over the flame anyway, so what’s the harm in making it in a large saucepan? As it turns out, the saucepan held on to heat far better than I gave it credit for (oops) so when I stirred in my chocolate chips, there was still enough latent heat to begin melting the chips. Not all the way, mind you, but I did have to work a little quickly.

But it wasn’t a disaster! The half-melted chips made for an impressive (to me) swirl of chocolate in each cookie.

Everything came together to make this pretty pretty heavenly, grown up cookie. The cookie itself is slightly savory and nutty, thanks to the salted brown butter with these great deep caramel taste. The cookies got rave reviews from my testers — both The Hubs ™ and Rainbow Dash, our roommate.  This may very well replace my usual cookie recipe.