An in-your-face brown butter bar cookie, stuffed with dried cranberries and white chocolate chips, with a hint of saltiness on top. Great for coffee dipping!
I think I might be in love with brown butter.
Shh. Don’t tell my husband.
There’s just something special about that warm, nutty, mahogany colored stuff that makes you feel oh-so-cozy and safe, isn’t there? I’ve been sneaking it in to a lot of things, lately, and I feel like we’ve become very close friends.
Friends who cuddle up on the couch to watch bad TV together, drink coffee together, eat tortellini together, take a dip in a tall, cold glass of milk together…
Wait, wait, I’m talking about these White Chocolate Cranberry Brown Butter Bars, you weirdos. Simmer.
So, bear with me.
This Christmas Cookie Week 2014 thing, and all the baking I’ve been doing to fulfill my cookie swap duties is getting me so revved up for the holidays! Despite me having wanted to decorate the house since November, Mr. Crumby and I are finally going out to get our tree tomorrow night, and I’m happy beyond belief to be finally pulling all of my decorations out of their big gray totes and decking the halls!
We got our first real, non-plastic out-of-a-box Fraser Fir tree back in 2012, to celebrate our first married Christmas. We loved it so much, last year we got another one to celebrate Vader, our Christmas puppy.
One thing with live Christmas trees. The needles. Oh, they are hell to clean. They just constantly fall off, and just when you think you’ve vacuumed them all up for the tenth day in a row, the world’s cutest puppy comes along and gifts you with a fresh Fraser carpet.
Thanks for adopting me, Mom & Dad! I love my 7 foot tasty toy! Let me share some with you because I love chasing and barking at that machine you bring out when I play with this thing!
Upon chucking the tree to the curb the following January, both years, we swore the next year, we’d get a great tree on Black Friday or after Christmas for the following year.
I bet you can guess how that’s gone. So, fresh fir going up tomorrow, and we get to shop for it in typical Floridian winter weather. Time to break out the jackets, it’ll be in the 50’s!
Insert facetious laugh here.
I can’t wait to cuddle up with my boys on the couch in front of our lovely, fragrant, seasonal friend with a cup of cocoa and a plate of these soft yet crunchy brown butter bar cookies. The transformed butter truly stands out in these babies, and the sprinkle of sea salt on top balances out the sweetness of the white chocolate and the dried cranberries’ tart bite.
Just, don’t go too crazy with the salt. I’m totally guilty of turning my head for a split second while sprinkling, and a few of them ended up a bit off balance.
Even still, Mr. Crumby said these were his favorite of the cookie batches I pumped out last weekend.
He’s always been my biggest fan. ♥
White Chocolate Cranberry Brown Butter Bars
Ingredients
- 2 ½ cups all purpose flour
- 1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- ¾ cup (1 & 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 1 cup brown sugar
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup white chocolate chips
- ½ cup dried cranberries
- Sea salt for garnish (optional)
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, and cornstarch. Set aside.
- In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat, then allow to boil for 5-7 minutes, whisking constantly, until it turns a deep nut brown, and you see small flecks of brown in the butter. Remove from heat and allow to cool for 5 minutes.
- In a large, heat-proof bowl, combine brown butter and sugars, mixing on medium speed for 1-2 minutes. Add in egg and vanilla and mix until incorporated.
- Gradually add the dry ingredients into the wet, mixing until dough is thick and moldable. You may need to add more flour here, or a bit of milk, to get the consistency correct.
- Mix in the white chips and dried cranberries, folding them in with a wooden spoon or spatula.
- Refrigerate dough for 1-24 hours. The longer the better, but if you're in a rush, 30 minutes in the freezer should do.
- Line your baking sheets with parchment of Silpat liners.Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
- Section the dough in to 3 parts. On a surface dusted lightly with flour, roll each part into a log 12 inches in length. Place logs on prepared cookie sheet, and flatted them to about ¾ tall. Repeat with remaining sections of dough.
- Sprinkle sea salt sparsely on top of each log if you desire.
- Bake logs for 12-15 minutes, until golden brown color is consistent.Your oven may vary.
- Immediately after removing cookies from oven, use a metal spatula to cut 2-inch wide cookies out of each bar.
- Cool bars on cookie sheet for 10 minutes, then separate bars and move them to a cooling rack to finish cooling.
Nutrition
A COMPANION ITEM FOR THESE BROWN BUTTER BARS…
These bars, like most cookies, are a wonderful companion for coffee! This week on My Cooking Spot, I’m sharing my new favorite homemade Vanilla Mint Coffee Creamer recipe, so be sure to stop by and check that out as well!
ORDER OUR #1 BEST SELLER COOKBOOK!
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DAY ONE | Snickerdoodles (3 Ways!) DAY TWO | White Chocolate Cranberry Brown Butter Bars DAY THREE | Pumpkin Butterscotch Streusel Cookies DAY FOUR | Oatmeal Peanut Butter Pretzel Chunk Cookies DAY FIVE | Chocolate Chip Cookie Bronados |
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Jamie says
Yum!!!
Beth Jenkins says
Those look so good!
Kristin @ MOMentous Moms says
Yummy! I love brown butter too! I need new inspiration for my cookie week, this sounds like an awesome idea.
Erin @ The Speckled Palate says
Well, girl, you are freaking KNOCKING Christmas Cookie Week out of the park with all these gorgeous recipes, and and I am stupid excited to have you on board for this celebration of butter, sugar and holiday goodness. (Also, I went ahead and added this to the link-up found http://www.thespeckledpalate.com/2014/12/07/christmas-cookie-week-2014/ so I could keep track of everything being shared — pregnancy brain is real. I hope that’s OK!)
Like you, I’m a HUGE fan of browned butter… and I can imagine that these bars taste amazing just solely based on the flavor combination. And I have a feeling these beauts are going to be made in our kitchen sometime soon!
Also, I TOTALLY feel you on the whole live Christmas tree thing. We got ours last Friday, and I have yet to get around to decorating it… but it smells SO GOOD, even if the pine needles make for a bit of a mess. Here’s to our dogs not entirely ruining the trees before Christmas Day!
Jennifer Dawn says
Wow! These look wonderful! Following you now!
Erica says
Thank you for the sweet words and follow!