Brown Butter Cottage Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies
Thick, soft browned butter cookie. Blended cottage cheese carries the moisture and the protein, a quarter teaspoon of instant coffee deepens the chocolate, and a long cold rest does the rest. No protein powder, about a third less sugar, and 70 percent more protein than a classic homemade chocolate chip cookie.
Servings: 12 Cookies
Calories: 290kcal
Equipment
- Digital Kitchen Scale
- Light bottomed saucepan
- Food processor High speed blender
- Large mixing bowl
- Half sheet pans
- Parchment paper
- Cooling rack
Ingredients
- 230 g Good Culture/ Nancy's 4% cottage cheese blended completely smooth (1 cup)
- 285 g King Arthur organic unbleached bread flour 2 cups plus 6 tablespoons
- 160 g brown sugar packed (3/4 cup)
- 40 g honey 2 tablespoons
- 1/4 teaspoon dark roast instant coffee
- 85 g unsalted butter weighed before browning (6 tablespoons)
- 2 large egg yolks
- 30 g whole milk 2 tablespoons
- 3 g baking soda 1/2 teaspoon
- 6 g fine sea salt 1 teaspoon
- 12 g vanilla extract 1 tablespoon
- 150 g dark chocolate chips 69% cacao (scant 1 cup)
- Extra dark chocolate chunks for pressing on top
- Flaky sea salt for finishing
Instructions
- Blend the cottage cheese with the vanilla in a high speed blender until completely smooth with no curds visible at all. Doing this first will take the chill off before adding it into the dough.
- Melt the butter in a light bottomed saucepan over medium high heat, stirring constantly. When the bubbling slows and changes in sound, lower the heat to medium low and keep stirring until the butter smells nutty and turns deep amber, about 5 to 7 minutes total. Pour it into a large mixing bowl and scrape every bit of the toasted milk solids from the bottom of the pan in with it. It should weigh close to 70g now.
- Add the brown sugar, honey, and instant coffee to the hot butter, stir briefly to combine, and let the mixture sit for 5 minutes. The coffee needs the hot liquid to dissolve, which is why it goes in here rather than with the dry ingredients.
- Whisk for about 1 minute, until the mixture looks like very wet sand and has pulled together. Stop there and do not whip air into it. If using a stand mixer, the paddle attchment is fine for this.
- Let the mixture cool to warm before continuing, since hot butter will scramble the yolks.
- Whisk the egg yolks into the butter and sugar for about 2 minutes, until creamy and lighter but not fluffy.
- Add the blended cottage cheese and whisk until smooth, then add the milk and stir gently just until incorporated.
- Whisk the flour, baking soda, and fine sea salt together in a separate bowl, then fold them into the wet mixture by hand with a rubber spatula. Fold in the chocolate chips. If using a stand mixer, go slow here as to not over mix.
- Cover the bowl and refrigerate for 8-12 hours. The dough will feel loose when you cover it. Do not add flour, it firms up as the flour hydrates.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F and line two half sheet pans with parchment paper.
- Portion the cold dough at 80-85g each for 12 cookies. Press each portion into a thick disc rather than leaving it as a ball, spacing them well apart on the pans. Press extra chocolate chunks onto the tops and finish with flaky sea salt.
- Bake for 14 minutes, until the edges are golden and set and the centers still look soft and matte. If they seem to be domeing, pull the pan at five minutes a tap the tray onto the counter a few times, then continue to bake.
- Cool on the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to finish.
Notes
Blend the cottage cheese completely
This is the step that decides whether the cookie works. Any curd left in the blender becomes a texture in the finished cookie. Blend until it looks like thick cream with no visible graininess at all.
The dough is supposed to feel loose
Cottage cheese brings a great deal of water into this dough, and bread flour needs hours to absorb it. Adding flour to correct the texture before chilling gives you a dry, cakey cookie. The refrigerator is the fix.
About the instant coffee
You will not taste coffee. It is there because coffee shares aromatic compounds with cocoa and its bitterness heightens perceived chocolate intensity, so a quarter teaspoon makes the chocolate read deeper without announcing itself. Leave it out if you would rather, the cookie still works.
Why these bake up golden rather than deep brown
Browning needs a hot dry surface, and this dough gives it neither. There is about a third less sugar here than in a classic chocolate chip cookie, so there is less to caramelize, and the cottage cheese brings enough water that the surface spends much of the bake evaporating rather than browning. Watch the edges instead of the center. Pull them when the outer rim is golden and set while the middle still looks soft, and let them finish on the hot pan.
If they dome instead of spreading
Pull the pan at about 5 minutes, drop it firmly onto the counter two or three times until the centers collapse, then return it to the oven to finish. Flattening the dough into discs before baking prevents this most of the time.
Storage and freezing
These keep soft in an airtight container on the counter for 4 days. To freeze the dough, portion and flatten the discs, freeze them solid on a sheet pan, then bag them and bake straight from frozen with 2 to 3 minutes added. Baked cookies freeze well too and warm back up in a 300°F oven in about 5 minutes.
Chocolate
I use Enjoy Life dark chocolate morsels and Hu Dark Chocolate Gems which is a higher % cacao so less sweet. A standard semi sweet chip carries close to 40% more sugar, so if you swap them in expect a noticeably sweeter cookie.
