#20 Brown Butter Cookies 1961

Admire the Brown Butter Cookies now; no more to come.

Like an edible sand castle, if there were such a thing, these cookies have a fine texture that crumbles and melts in the mouth. Delicate and short-bready, these cookies smell a lot like the "cookie soap" my friend gave me (see the May 20, 2011 post). They are true novelties that get great reviews from friends.

Those same friends must have wondered at the quizzical expression on my face while listening to their compliments. My furrowed brow said, "Really?"

I didn't want them to be a hit. In fact, I never want to make them again. Here's why.

These cookies want a cup of butter to be heated in a pan until it browns.  This is the step that is supposed to produce the sandy texture. Not the way I prefer to spend 30 minutes. Kneading is fun. Making shapes from rolled out dough can feel creative. But watching butter simmer...well, I might as well watch my tomatoes "grow" in a Seattle spring. Just as entertaining.

I made the mistake of adding salt to the butter before it had cooled and managed to burn the salt in the very hot liquid. It turned dark brown immediately and added flecks to the cookies, but tasted fine. I've never complained about the salty brown bits left behind in the bacon pan, and these were no different. Again, flavor is not a problem. As with mail order, the painful part is the processing and handling.

The recipe calls for "vanilla sugar" which the notes say you can make by putting a vanilla bean into some granulated sugar and "let it stand for at least 2 days--the longer, the better." I consider my pantry pretty well-stocked. I even had a vial of vanilla beans on hand. But two days? Really? I used vanilla extract.

Kneaded (not gently), fork-tined and ready for the oven,
with a plain or blanched almond topping.

The recipe notes say, "The dough is very crumbly, like a shortbread dough, and it must be kneaded to make it come together in a smooth mass; do not be gentle." (Emphasis mine.) True to the warning, these are frustrating fall-apart disks you can't rely on to produce a full plate of dessert.

Even my thinnest offset spatula had trouble transferring them from cookie sheet to serving plate.

Way too delicate to slide off a cookie sheet.

The broken cookies on the sheet that can't be served to company are the worst. Here is a recipe for derailing your cookie-avoiding diet. Both my husband and I ate far too many broken-cookies-not-good-enough-for-company.

And see that photo of the cookies on a plate? That photo required repeated crumb sweeping with a basting brush. They drop grit like beach towels you brought home from the beach.

So, why did I stare puzzled at my friends who devoured every one of the cookies I brought to our meeting? Now you know.

A nearly exact recipe is here if you dare.