Deep Dish Milky Way Brown Butter Cookies: dreamy cookies with swirls of caramel and chocolate laced through a nutty brown butter cookie. You’ll need a TON of restraint to say no!
Is it me or does it seem like there are less and less kids who trick or treating these days? Or maybe it’s just our area?
Our street is such a dud when it comes to Halloween. Many of the people are a bit older, with kids who are grown and gone, and there are very few houses that have their lights on. And we live waaay off the street so we don’t get ANY trick or treaters at all. It’s so sad!
But that doesn’t mean that we didn’t find another neighborhood on Halloween night this week to take Riley for her first trick or treat evening! (OMG SO FUN!!) And it doesn’t mean that we don’t buy candy either. Because, Halloween candy is the best candy and no Halloween with jack o’ lanterns and The Great Pumpkin would be the same without it!
The result: every year, we’ve got too much candy leftover. It never fails. I’m sure the same would happen if we lived in a neighborhood with lots of trick or treaters.
What can I say? I like to be prepared and I HATE running out of things.
So you’ve got leftover Halloween candy or mounds of candy in your kids’ buckets and you’re wondering what to do with it. What do you do? Do you freeze it? Give it to your dentist? Throw it out? (The HORROR!)
I shared a whole bunch of ideas a few years back of what I like to do with leftover candy and while Kyle is always team “Eat All the Candy,” I’m still squirreling away candy from him to use up in new recipes. Like for these deep dish Milky Way brown butter cookies.
And yes, I fully realize that I’m back-to-backing two cookie recipes on the site between this and last week but OH BABY! These cookies are so insanely delicious that they didn’t last more than a day in this house. Thank goodness we’ve had family here to help eat them! They were so great that I couldn’t possibly wait another week to share them with you.
The brown butter cookie base is, as you can imagine, deeply flavored and a little nutty. That brown butter is MAGIC, I swear.
Unlike many recipes I’ve seen where you make the brown butter then chill it to bring it back to a room temperature state – Holy cow! What a long process that is! – this recipe uses the brown butter while it is still warm, mixing it in to dark brown and granulated sugars to start the cookie dough. In fact, it’s very much like those caramel corn brown butter cookies I made a few years ago.
Right away from the smells of that mixture, when the warm brown butter hits the sugars, you know these are going to be really excellent cookies. All mixed up by hand in a bowl – no mixers needed for this one, folks! – you’ll mix a bunch of chopped up Milky Way bars into the dough and then scoop out the dough and into the oven they go!
The result is a super soft and chewy, sweet and nutty, caramel-laced cookie with chunks of Milky Way bits studded throughout. I can’t even begin to explain how incredible these brown butter cookies are! We’re major cookie lovers and have pretty high cookie standards and these deep dish Milky Way brown butter cookies completely hit on all of our biggest cookie expectations.
How’s THAT for a great cookie!
Deep Dish Milky Way Brown Butter Cookies
- Prep Time: 30min
- Cook Time: 14-18min (see below)
- Yield: about 3 dozen (2 ¾-inch) deep dish cookies
Notes
I bought a whoopie pie pan years ago specifically to make these cookies (and yes, this is the first time I’ve used it) but you don’t need that pan for these cookies. I made half of the batch with that pan and half with a regular muffin pan and both batches were equally as good; bake times for both are below. The special pan gives the cookies a little more surface area since the wells are a smidge wider than the muffin pan. If you’re not into either, bake the dough directly on a parchment-lined baking sheet but be sure to chill the dough on the baking sheet before baking since the candy will run out of the cookies when baked (baking in the pans prevents this from happening). ¾
Ingredients
1 ¾ cups (8 ¾ oz) all-purpose flour
½ tsp baking soda
14 tbsp (7 oz) unsalted butter, divided
½ cup (3 ½ oz) granulated sugar
¾ cup (5 ¼ oz) packed dark brown sugar
1 tsp table salt
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
10 oz Milky Way bars, chopped into ¼-inch cubes (doesn’t have to be exact)
Instructions
-
01
Preheat oven to 375°. Spray the wells of whoopie pie or regular-size (12-well) muffin pans with cooking or baking spray.
Stir the flour and baking soda together in a medium bowl; set aside.
-
02
In a light-colored or stainless large saucepan or 10-inch fry pan, heat 10 tablespoons of the butter over medium heat. When the butter starts to foam, begin swirling it around in the pan. Brown bits will start to gather on the edges of the pan. Keep swirling over the heat until the butter turns dark brown, smells nutty, and brown bits form and gather on the bottom of the pan. (This should take about 2-3 minutes total. Pay close attention towards the end – the butter can burn very easily!)
Immediately pour the brown butter into a large heatproof mixing bowl and stir the remaining butter in pieces into the brown butter until they completely disappear.
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03
Whisk in both sugars, salt, and vanilla to the melted butter until incoporate. Whisk in the egg and yolk and whisk for about 30 seconds, until no sugar lumps remain. Allow the mixture to rest for 3 minutes and then whisk for 30 seconds. Repeat resting and whisking 2 more times – the mixture should be thick and shiny by the end.
Using a silicone spatula or wooden spoon, stir the flour mixture into the wet ingredients. Fold in the Milky Way bits.
-
04
Working in batches, divide the dough between the wells of your pan(s). Two to three tablespoons of dough should be enough for both types of pans and you could add more to the muffin pan if you wanted a thicker cookie (you’ll need an extra minute on the baking time if you want a really thick muffin pan cookie).
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05
Bake:
1) whoopie pie pan = 14-16 minutes or
2) 12-well muffin pan = 16-18 minutesRotate the pan(s) 180° halfway through the baking time. If you notice any of the candy oozing out on the pan, push it back in to the cookies with the tip of a spoon. When fully baked, cookies should be golden brown around the edges and across the tops. Do not overbake.
Transfer the pan(s) to a wire rack and allow the cookies to cool for no more than 5 minutes before shimmying them out of the pan(s) – an offset icing spatula works great for this – to cool on a rack completely. Or…eat them warm. How could you resist?
Cookies will keep fresh in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
inspired by Cookies and Cups | brown butter cookie recipe from America’s Test Kitchen
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