Salted Brown Butter Toffee Chocolate Chunk Cookies

These chewy toffee cookies are filled with gooey pockets of chocolate, crunchy bits of toffee, and a nutty flavor from the brown butter that’s all topped off with a sprinkling of flake sea salt for a truly addictive dessert. No chilling required! Try one of my other cookie recipes next.

Question for you: is there anything better than the smell of cookies fresh out of the oven?

Wait, yes there is – the taste of cookies fresh out of the oven.

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And also that perfect crinkle of a cookie as it sets when it’s fresh out of the oven. And puddles of melty chocolate that haven’t yet set, and may or may not burn your mouth, but are totally worth it.

Also cookie dough that you can’t help but keep tasting while you’re waiting for your cookies to come out of the oven.

Okay, let’s just say there are a lot of really great things involved with baking cookies. And especially with these cookies.

Brown butter gives it a whole other dimension of flavor, and you can never go wrong with chocolate and toffee together. And add a little salt?

Heaven. Pure, unadulterated heaven. These are toffee cookies taken to the next level.

I can’t take credit for the origin of this recipe, since I adapted it from a recipe on Bon Appetit whose pictures have been making my mouth water for the last year. I liked theirs, but to be honest I like mine more.

[gasp]

Honestly, it’s partially a matter of accessibility. Those chocolate wafers they use are WONDERFUL, but – in my experience – can be difficult to obtain. I wanted a recipe that could be made easily with what you probably have in your pantry, or at least the bulk of it.

Picking up a bag of toffee baking bits is much easier (and cheaper) than that chocolate.

Making salted toffee chocolate chunk cookies

1. The first step is browning the butter. Browned butter has a bold and nutty flavor that really enhances the overall flavor intensity of these cookies. So don’t skip this step!
   
   Heat it in a small saucepan over medium heat until it foams, then bubbles – after that, it will quickly start to brown and you’re remove it from heat and transfer it a large bowl to cool while you prep the rest.

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Combine the wet ingredients. Well, first you’ll whisk to combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl and set it aside. And then you’ll add brown sugar and granulated sugar to the bowl of browned butter and mix it on medium speed with a hand mixer (aff link) for about a minute to combine. Add an egg and vanilla and beat again to fully combine.

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Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. With the mixer on low speed, add the dry mixture to the bowl of wet ingredients and beat to just combine. It will thicken as you add the rest of the dry mixture in, so turn up the speed a notch if you need to.

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Fold in the add ins! For the pictures below, I actually used toffee wafers and chocolate chunks, but the rest of the photos show the toffee chips. Both taste delicious, both are addictive. You can’t wrong.

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Sprinkle with a little salt. I like to add a dash of Maldon Sea Salt Flakes (aff link) to the top of each cookie for the perfect sweet and salty combo.

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Bake and cool! This is critical. Well, baking is critical – obviously. But so is the cooling time – you want to let them cool on the baking sheet for at least 10 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack (aff link). This allows them to fully set and get those gorgeous crinkles.

Use a quality vanilla extract

Another thing that makes my cookies so freaking good is that I use The Watkins Co. pure vanilla extract. I’m sure you’ve seen it a million times, and there’s a good chance you already have it in your cabinet! 

It’s award-winning and for good reason: because it’s a low-alcohol formula, you can still taste the flavor in your baked goods. And what’s the point of adding an ingredient with flavor if you can’t taste the flavor in the end product?

That’s just silly.

How many cookies does this recipe make?

This recipe makes about 12-15 good-sized cookies, so if you want more than that, just double the recipe – and note that browning the butter may take a smidge longer.

There cookies are addictive, so just keep that in mind if you’re considering making a bunch to keep around the house to satisfy your sweet tooth. You may have the best intentions and think that you’re going to eat one and be done, but… well, you won’t. I’m sorry.

Will power has no place in the presence of these discs of sweet and salty excellence. 

But, hey – if you manage to limit your consumption to a single cookie and you don’t break out in FOMO sweat, you get a big high five from me. 

Reward yourself… with another cookies.

More toffee, toffee, toffee:

• Sweet Buttercrunch Toffee from Hunger Thirst Play
• Toffee Cheesecake Pie from Together as Family
• Chocolate Dipped Toffee Pecan Shortbread Cookies from Cooking Classy
• Butterscotch Toffee Chocolate Fudge Cookies from Sally’s Baking Addiction

After you’ve made this recipe, please leave a comment below with a rating – and if you came from Pinterest, add a photo to the Pin of what you make to the pin to share your experience!

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A big thank you to The Watkins Co. for an adorable gift box full of various products for me to try, including my go-to pure vanilla extract!