Ultimate Chewy Chocolate Chunk Cookies: Elevating Flavor with Kirkland Mixed Nut Butter and Brown Butter
Discover the secret to exceptionally large, soft, and chewy chocolate chunk cookies that boast a depth of flavor beyond your wildest dreams. This recipe utilizes a generous spoonful of Costco’s Kirkland Mixed Nut Butter with Seeds, transforming a classic treat into something truly extraordinary. While the nut butter itself doesn’t overpower the traditional chocolate chip cookie profile—which is rich with notes of browned butter, warm vanilla, deep molasses, and sweet caramel—it subtly enhances the cookie’s structure and texture, yielding a bake that’s perfectly irresistible. Best of all, you don’t even need an electric mixer to achieve these bakery-quality results, making them an accessible and satisfying baking project for anyone.
The Foundation of Flavor: Brown Butter and Mixed Nut Butter
The journey to these exceptional cookies begins with a critical first step: browning half of the butter. This technique isn’t just for show; it’s a foundational flavor builder. By browning half of the butter, we unlock a complex, nutty, and toasted aroma that permeates the entire cookie, adding an incredible depth often missing from standard chocolate chip recipes. This process gently cooks the milk solids in the butter, transforming them into golden-brown flecks that impart an unparalleled richness. We choose to brown only half of the butter to strike a perfect balance; it provides intense flavor without sacrificing too much moisture, ensuring our cookies remain wonderfully soft and chewy. A clever trick is to then add the remaining cold butter to the warm browned butter. This not only helps to cool down the mixture quickly but also allows the cold butter to gently melt and incorporate, creating a smooth, emulsified base. Once combined with the distinctive Kirkland Mixed Nut Butter with Seeds and a splash of vanilla, the mixture is left to cool. It’s crucial that this butter mixture cools until it reaches a soft-set, opaque consistency. This semi-solid state is vital for proper creaming with the sugars, which in turn contributes significantly to the cookie’s final texture, preventing excessive spread and promoting a thicker, chewier bite.
Crafting the Perfect Dry Ingredient Blend for Ideal Texture
While your flavorful butter blend is cooling to perfection, it’s the ideal time to prepare your dry ingredients. The choice of flour plays a surprisingly significant role in the final texture of your cookies. While good old all-purpose flour yields perfectly delicious results, for an optimal balance of chewiness and tenderness, I’ve found that a blend of bread flour and cake flour works wonders. Bread flour, with its higher protein content, contributes to a delightful chewiness, while cake flour, lower in protein, ensures a tender crumb. Feel free to experiment or stick with all-purpose for a reliably great cookie. Alongside the flour, you’ll incorporate baking soda and baking powder. Baking soda reacts with acidic ingredients (like brown sugar and cream of tartar) to help the cookies spread and become chewy, while baking powder provides lift, making them airy and tender. A touch of salt is essential to balance the sweetness and enhance all the other flavors. The often-overlooked secret ingredient here is cream of tartar. This acidic powder works synergistically with baking soda, not only assisting in the rise but also preventing sugar crystallization, which helps keep the cookies wonderfully soft over time. Finally, a tiny pinch of cinnamon is added. This isn’t to make your cookies taste distinctly like cinnamon, but rather to add an indiscernible background note that subtly rounds out the overall flavor profile, adding warmth and complexity without taking center stage.
Assembling Your Cookie Dough: Simplicity for Superior Results
With your brown butter mixture cooled to a soft-set, opaque consistency and your dry ingredients whisked together, it’s time to bring everything together to form your irresistible cookie dough. This recipe prides itself on its simplicity, requiring no electric mixer, though you can certainly use one if you prefer. Start by adding the light brown sugar, granulated sugar, and the large egg to your cooled butter and vanilla mixture. Using a sturdy wooden spoon or a robust spatula, stir these ingredients vigorously by hand until they are thoroughly combined and smooth. This manual mixing allows you to feel the dough’s developing texture and avoid overworking it, a common pitfall that can lead to tough cookies. Once the wet ingredients are well-integrated, gradually add your prepared dry flour mixture. Continue stirring gently until just combined. The key here is to mix until no dry streaks of flour remain, but resist the urge to overmix. Overmixing develops the gluten in the flour too much, which can result in a tougher cookie. You’re aiming for a soft, pliable dough that holds its shape, ready for the glorious addition of chocolate.
The Heart of the Cookie: A Symphony of Chocolate Chips and Chunks
No chocolate chunk cookie is complete without a generous abundance of high-quality chocolate, and this recipe calls for a symphony of varieties to create layers of flavor and texture. While they are called “Chocolate Chunk Cookies,” I often find myself reaching for Ghirardelli Bittersweet Chips. These aren’t your average small chips; they are notably larger than standard chips and possess a rich, deep chocolate flavor that is slightly less sweet, providing a beautiful contrast to the cookie dough. However, the choice is entirely yours. Feel free to experiment with your favorite type of bittersweet chocolate, whether it’s chopped from a bar or specialty chips. To add even more complexity, I incorporate Guittard Wafers and sometimes even milk chocolate chips into the mix. This combination ensures that every bite offers a different chocolate experience – from the intense bitterness of dark chocolate to the creamy sweetness of milk chocolate, all melting into glorious pools within the cookie. The critical takeaway here is to use *large* pieces of chocolate: significant chips, wafers, or actual chunks. These larger pieces don’t just distribute better; they create impressive pockets and streaks of melted chocolate throughout the cookie, contributing to both its visual appeal and its utterly decadent mouthfeel. The way these large pieces melt and merge is what truly defines a superior chocolate chunk cookie.
Embracing the Nutty Undertone: Walnuts or Pecans
Given that these magnificent chocolate chunk cookies already feature the subtle, complex notes of Kirkland Mixed Nut Butter, it only makes sense to further embrace the nutty theme by incorporating some additional crunch. A generous half cup of walnuts or pecans adds a wonderful textural contrast and an extra layer of earthy, toasty flavor that complements both the chocolate and the browned butter beautifully. Beyond just taste and texture, adding whole nut pieces can also serve a practical purpose: it makes it visually obvious that the cookies contain nuts, which is an important consideration for anyone with nut allergies or sensitivities. While the mixed nut butter provides a background flavor, the visible pieces of walnuts or pecans clearly signal their presence. For an even more profound nutty flavor, consider lightly toasting your walnuts or pecans in a dry pan or a low oven before adding them to the dough; this simple step truly enhances their aroma and crunch.
The Finishing Touch: A Sprinkle of Smoked Maldon Sea Salt
An unexpected yet utterly transformative ingredient in these chocolate chunk cookies is smoked Maldon sea salt. This isn’t just any coarse salt; Maldon sea salt is renowned for its distinctive flaky, pyramidal crystals and clean taste, and the smoked variety adds an incredible depth. Infused with natural wood smoke, it brings a subtle yet profound smoky aroma and flavor that provides a fascinating counterpoint to the sweetness of the chocolate and the richness of the cookie. It’s a truly unusual addition, but one that elevates these cookies from delicious to truly unforgettable. Even if you sometimes forget to sprinkle it on top (and rest assured, the cookies are still fantastic without it), the difference with a few grains of this coarse, smoky salt is remarkable. It enhances the chocolate, brightens the overall flavor profile, and adds a delightful pop of texture. If smoked Maldon isn’t available, regular flaky Maldon sea salt will still provide that essential sweet-and-salty balance, but the smoked version truly is a secret weapon for an extra layer of gourmet flavor.
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Recipe: Kirkland Mixed Nut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Kirkland Mixed Nut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Anna
Pin Recipe
Ingredients
- 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into chunks (170 grams)
- 2 tablespoons Kirkland Signature Mixed Nut Butter (32 grams)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour or use a mix of bread and cake flour (260 grams)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1/16 teaspoon cinnamon (optional) — just background flavor
- 1 teaspoon salt or ½ if using salted butter
- ¾ cup light brown sugar (150-160 grams)
- ½ cup granulated sugar (100 grams)
- 1 large egg (48 grams)
- 1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
- ½ cup semisweet or bittersweet wafers or chunks (or any other good quality dark chocolate)
- ½ cup walnut pieces
- Maldon sea salt or smoked Maldon sea salt
Instructions
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In a small, light-bottomed saucepan, brown 6 tablespoons of the unsalted butter over medium heat. Watch it carefully as it foams, then settles, revealing golden-brown specks at the bottom and emitting a fragrant, nutty aroma. This process typically takes 3-5 minutes. As soon as it reaches this perfect state, immediately scrape the browned butter, including all the delightful brown bits, into a large mixing bowl to stop the cooking process.
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Add the remaining 6 tablespoons of cold, chunky butter to the hot browned butter. The cold butter will help cool the mixture down quickly and prevent the browned butter from overcooking. Stir in the Kirkland Mixed Nut Butter and the vanilla extract. Continue to stir occasionally until the mixture cools and begins to set, becoming opaque and somewhat thick. This might take about 15-20 minutes, or you can speed it up by placing the bowl in an ice bath.
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While the butter mixture is cooling, grab a separate large bowl. Whisk together the flour (whether all-purpose or your bread/cake blend), baking soda, baking powder, cream of tartar, salt, and the optional pinch of cinnamon. Ensure these dry ingredients are thoroughly blended to guarantee even distribution in your cookies.
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Once the butter mixture has fully cooled and has a soft, opaque, somewhat solid consistency (similar to softened butter), add the light brown sugar, granulated sugar, and the large egg. Using a sturdy wooden spoon or a spatula, beat these ingredients by hand until the mixture is smooth, creamy, and well-incorporated. This step is crucial for the final texture of your cookies.
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Add the whisked dry flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Stir gently, just until a soft, cohesive dough forms and no dry streaks of flour are visible. Be careful not to overmix, as this can lead to tough cookies.
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Now for the best part: the chocolate! Add your bittersweet chocolate chips, semisweet or bittersweet wafers/chunks, and walnut pieces (if using) to the dough. Stir gently until they are evenly distributed throughout the dough. You can choose to incorporate all the chocolate now, or reserve a few pieces to press into the tops of the dough rounds before baking for a more visually appealing finish.
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Divide the dough into 10-12 equal-sized pieces. For large, uniform cookies, a large cookie scoop works well. Shape each piece into a round, about 2 ½ inches in diameter, pressing them slightly into a puck-like shape rather than a perfect sphere to encourage even spreading. Place the dough rounds in a zipper bag or on a plate covered tightly with plastic wrap. For optimal flavor development and a superior chewy texture, chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least 48 hours. This resting period allows the flavors to meld and the flour to fully hydrate, resulting in a more complex cookie with less spread. While you *can* bake one or two immediately (they’ll still be good!), the chilled dough truly yields a better result.
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When you’re ready to bake, remove the desired number of dough balls from the refrigerator. For cookies with more pronounced crinkles and crevices, allow them to come to room temperature (about 30-60 minutes) before baking. If baked directly from cold, they will still be delicious but may have a slightly different appearance.
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Position your oven rack in the lower third of the oven. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
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Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. This prevents sticking and ensures easy cleanup, while also promoting even baking.
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Place 4 of the prepared dough rounds on the lined baking sheet, ensuring they have ample space to spread without touching. If using, sprinkle a few flakes of Maldon sea salt or smoked Maldon sea salt evenly over the tops of the cookies.
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Bake for approximately 15 to 18 minutes, or until the edges are nicely browned and set, but the centers still appear slightly soft and gooey. You should see characteristic cracks forming across the top surface of the cookies. Immediately upon removing them from the oven, let them cool slightly on the baking sheet for about 3-5 minutes. This allows them to firm up without becoming brittle. Then, carefully slide the parchment paper with the cookies onto a cool surface or a wire rack to finish cooling completely. Enjoy your magnificent, chewy chocolate chunk cookies!