COOKIE MADNESS!
At the time I’m publishing this recipe, I have 250 cookie recipes on my website, plus a cookbook with 75 cookie recipes (a small handful from the site are published in that book), plus about 15 cookie recipes published in my 1st cookbook. I also publish a 2 week Christmas cookie countdown each year called Sally’s Cookie Palooza. You’d think I’d be tired of testing new cookie recipes after 10 years of this madness, but let me tell you—the cookie mania has only just begun. Today I’m serving up dark chocolate pecan cookies, a new cookie recipe that was an instant hit with my taste testers. With so many tested cookie recipes in my back pocket, it was hard to choose the starting point for this dark chocolate pecan flavor. Should we use my regular chocolate chip cookies and add pecans? Or try a rendition of these dark chocolate orange icebox cookies? I tested a few options, but ultimately decided on a brown butter cookie base. THE BEST! My recipe for brown butter toffee chocolate chip cookies was published in 2012 and has remained a favorite ever since. And now it tastes remarkable with cinnamon, dark chocolate, and pecans!
Tell Me About These Dark Chocolate Pecan Cookies
Flavor: Brown sugar, nutty brown butter, and a hint of cinnamon add warm, inviting flavors that are always welcome during the fall and winter seasons. You’ll also enjoy plenty of rich dark chocolate and buttery pecans, which not only add more flavor but varying texture as well. If you gravitate toward dark chocolate more than sweeter milk chocolate, you’ll adore these cookies. These are a lot of the same flavors we love in dark chocolate cranberry almond cookies, too. Texture: Each bite is loaded with crunchy pecans! The centers of the cookies are soft-baked and the edges crisp up beautifully. If you want pools of melty chocolate throughout the cookies, use quality chocolate, just like we do in dark chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies. Chocolate chips contain stabilizers which prevent them from melting in the oven. Instead, reach for Ghirardelli or Bakers brand bittersweet chocolate bars—they’re sold in the baking aisle. I use Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Bars in this recipe. Ease: Browning the butter and chilling the cookie dough in the refrigerator certainly add time, but neither are difficult steps. Almost immediately after browning the butter, begin mixing the dough together. Since we’re using melted (browned) butter, you do not need an electric mixer—a whisk and rubber spatula do the trick. After the dough comes together, chill it before scooping and baking the cookies. Without time in the refrigerator, this cookie dough will spread into greasy puddles.
Learn About Browning Butter
Brown butter is simply melted butter with a nutty, almost caramelized flavor brought on by gently cooking it on the stove. If you’ve never browned butter before, take a minute to review my How to Brown Butter guide. In less than 10 minutes, the butter sizzles, foams, and cooks into a vastly flavored ingredient you can use in today’s dark chocolate pecan cookies, pecan sugar cookies, brown butter pumpkin oatmeal cookies, apple blondies, brown butter berry tea cakes, and brown butter pound cake. For more uses and all of my success tips, see the How to Brown Butter guide linked above.
Overview: How to Make Dark Chocolate Pecan Cookies
The full printable recipe is below, but let me show you some step-by-step photos so you know what to expect. Chop up your chocolate into bite-size pieces and give the pecans a rough chop, too. Have both ready to go. Success tip: Brown the butter in a light-colored skillet or pot if you have one. If not, check the butter’s doneness by spooning some into a glass or white bowl. Combine the wet & dry ingredients, and then chill the cookie dough in the refrigerator. Order of chilling/shaping dough: You may notice that we scoop the brown butter toffee chocolate chip cookies dough into balls before chilling and that’s because the toffee chips make the dough extra crumbly. After chilling, it’s pretty difficult to roll/scoop that dough into uniform balls. Today’s recipe, which uses a similar dough base, isn’t nearly as crumbly so it is best to chill the dough before shaping. I hope you enjoyed learning about how this recipe came to life. It’s always so much fun to publish new cookie recipes!
