Brown Butter Linzer Cookies

My top tip to enhance your baking this week? BROWN the BUTTER.

Most cookie recipes use butter as the base of the batter. Like these Chai Spiced Oreos or these simple Butter Cookies. Typically, you beat the butter with some sort of sugar, add eggs, then flavorings (like vanilla, molasses or citrus zests), mix in the flour and leavening agents (if needed) and then toss in any chunky additions at the end (like chocolate chips, fruit or nuts).

The Creaming Method

That first step, the beating of the sugar and butter, is known as the creaming method. It incorporates air into the butter and lightens it up to create a fluffy batter.

Now, we all know butter is delicious. That’s just undeniable. It’s creamy and rich with a wonderful mouthfeel that melts on contact with your tongue. No wonder the French are obsessed! It’s super versatile, easy to work with and tastes good with almost anything. In fact, I can’t think of any ingredient that doesn’t work with butter…

Still thinking…

Nope! They all work.

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How do you Brown Butter?

Lo and behold! There is a way to make that butter even better!

Before you use it for your cookie dough, take the butter and throw it in a pan over medium high heat for 5-7 minutes. You want to let it bubble happily away until the solids in the bottom of the pan turn a lovely golden brown. Another hint you’ve done it? A beautiful nutty aroma will waft out of the pan and fill your kitchen with buttery goodness. You’ve essentially boiled the water out of the butter and lightly caramelized the bits that settled to the bottom of the pan. Doing this adds another dimension to your butter and therefore your cookie, that is just over the top.

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Note: As it cooks, make sure to swirl the pan and watch closely to ensure it doesn’t burn! It goes from golden brown to burnt quite quickly, so as soon as you see those brown bits, remove it from the heat and pour the butter into a separate bowl. If you miss this step, it will continue to cook from the residual heat of the pot and screw up your beautiful butter!

Once the butter is browned and then cooled back into a solid, you can use it just like you would a fresh stick of butter in your cookie dough. You may need to add a bit of liquid (extracts, juices or milk) to make up for the water that was boiled out but in most recipes it works straight away! Use it in a sugar cookie, snickerdoodle or chocolate chip cookie dough to up the ante.

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Brown Butter Linzer Cookies

These Brown Butter Linzer Cookies were inspired by Food and Wine’s Spitzbuben Cookies. They were onto something when they played with the brown butter and cardamom! They’re delightfully light and crunchy and can be filled with raspberry or apricot jam. I absolutely love cardamom, so I make sure to add it freshly ground from my spice grinder. The floral notes combined with the spicy ginger complement the brown butter so beautifully. Add in the touch of sweet jam and you’ve got a whole melody in your mouth.

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New to So Let Them Eat Cake

Make sure to check out the video below for a step by step of the recipe! And if you like what you see, please subscribe to my channel. It’s a fresh channel so there’s not much content just yet, but please know there is much more to come! I’ve got a lot more up my sleeve this year and I’d love for you to be along for the ride!

Cheers!

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