I’ve made these cookies twice before. They’re my girlfriend’s favorite and are generally quite the crowd-pleaser (why is my computer underlining that word? It’s totally a word!). We found the recipe on a former classmate’s adorable blog, which is basically the antithesis of my own and quite lovely.
The key is adding browned butter and toasted coconut. The butter adds a nice, rich flavor, while the coconut adds flavor and texture.
I made a full batch today that I plan to share, even though they turned out a little…questionable.
The reason for this might be the fact that I was missing one of the key ingredients: butter.
But I did have some butter substitute. So I scooped it out of its jar and into a heated pan to “brown.” It turned bright yellow and almost immediately started to boil, splattering big, oily drops of faux-butter all over the stove top.
I, uh, took it off the heat. But ideally, if you have butter, you want to brown a cup of it for a while, until it turns caramel-colored (but not until it separates and looks all weird).
Here’s what you’ll need:
• An oven preheated at 350 degrees
• I c butter (not butter substitute………)
• 3/4 c brown sugar
• 1 c white sugar
• 1/4 c milk
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbsp. vanilla
• 2 1/2 c all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 c toasted, unsweetened coconut (mine was sweetened…oops)
• 1 c dark chocolate chips (I like the Ghirardelli semisweet chips, but this time I used some generic ones I found at CVS…I might be in money-saving mode)
Mix the sugars in with the browned butter, or, in my case, with the weird melted fake butter. Toast the coconut, gently and without burning. Set it aside. Add the milk and vanilla in with the butter and sugar, along with the egg and egg yolk.
In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Or, you can do what I did and mix everything together at once, because sometimes giving a fuck just takes too much effort.
Chill the dough, basically forever. Because it is the stickiest dough your hands will ever come in contact with. I don’t remember it being this sticky before. Again, I blame margarine. After you chill the shit out of the dough, form it into balls on a cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes. Mine actually came out looking decent, but they’re so…light. And cakey. And they fall apart in my hand. They’re much more bland than I remember.
So, when in doubt, use butter!
The Aspirational Chef 