Brown Butter Snickerdoodles Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Does browning butter make a difference in cookies? ›

As you melt butter in a hot skillet and then let it bubble, its amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) react with its sugars to create new, nutty-flavored, brown-colored (and very delicious) compounds that add even more flavor to the classic snickerdoodle.

The Problem: Your Oven Is Too Hot

If your cookies repeatedly turn out flat, no matter the recipe, chances are your oven is too hot. Here's what's happening. The butter melts super quickly in a too-hot oven before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure.

Let the brown butter cool sufficiently.

Using hot, melted butter will yield greasy dough and cause the cookies to spread too much when baked. By allowing the butter to solidify before adding it to the dough, you're able to bake the cookies immediately—no chill time required.

With less water, you also end up with less gluten development, thus a cookie made with browned butter is softer and more tender than one made with creamed or plain melted butter.

During the process of browning, much of the water evaporates from the butter. So if you start out with 1 cup of butter, you'll be left with just a hair over 3/4 cup of butter. You'll lose a couple tablespoons in the process. This is the evaporating effect.

As butter melts, it will begin to foam. Watch butter closely. The color will progress from a bright yellow to a golden tan, then quickly to a deep golden brown. When you smell a nutty aroma, butter is deep golden brown and browned milk solids appear in bottom of pan, take pan off the heat.

Under-browned butter won't carry as much flavor, and won't bring that lovely nuttiness to your bake. It will look lighter as you'll see in the photo below. Over-browned butter will taste bitter or even burnt, and be darker brown in color, as you can see in the photo below.

Why are my snickerdoodles flat? Snickerdoodles can come out flat if 1) the leaveners you used (for this recipe, it's both the baking soda and the cream of tartar) are on the old side and no longer work, and 2) if you baked them at a lower temperature.

Use a silicone baking mat or parchment paper. Coating your baking sheet with nonstick spray or butter creates an overly greasy foundation, causing the cookies to spread. I always recommend a silicone baking mat because they grip onto the bottom of your cookie dough, preventing the cookies from spreading too much.

Try using baking powder instead of baking soda. Baking soda encourages spreading while baking powder puffs the cookies up. If your recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of baking soda, you would use 3 to 4 teaspoons of baking powder. Caution: This could result in an unwanted flavor shift.

Which is better, baking soda or baking powder? ›

The leavening power of baking soda is about three to four times stronger than baking powder. This means that you need a lot less baking soda in your recipes. If a recipe calls for baking soda and you only have baking powder, you need to use the right baking soda to baking powder conversion.

Adding too many eggs can result in gummy, cake-like cookies. Adding too few eggs can result in dry, crumbly cookies. Beat each one in separately and thoroughly. If you run out of eggs while baking and find that you need more, you can add 1/4 cup vegetable oil for each egg required.

Use room temp ingredients.

After browning your butter, make sure it's cool enough to touch before adding it to your dough. I usually set it aside to cool for 10-15 minutes before making the recipe.

Brown butter adds rich nutty and caramel notes to your baked good. It truly turns up the flavor of most any recipe and is a great little trick to keep in your back pocket when you want to impress with your baking.

Browned butter has a sweet and savory flavor, almost like toffee, which makes these cookies rich, delicious, and a little caramelly!

Not only is the color different, but so is the taste. Adding brown butter results in a rich and nutty flavor that is partly born out of the blending of the butter with the molasses found in the brown sugar.