Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Brown Butter Shortbread Cookies with Dulce De Leche.


Last weekend I found 4 cans of sweetened condensed milk in the cupboards.  With one of the cans, I decided to make some dulce de leche.  It was super easy (just pour a can into a large microwave-safe bowl, zap for 10-15 minutes on 30% power, stirring every few minutes until it's golden), but left me with a jar of dulce de leche.  So last night I had this genius idea to make some brown butter cookies and sandwich them with the dulce de leche.  Sounds delicious, right?  They were!  However these cookies were almost TOO tender - they crumbled into pieces at the most gentle touch, so they were smashed into bits after this photo shoot and will hopefully make a super crust for something in the future.  I'm going to post the recipe here, maybe someone can tell me what I did wrong?



Brown Butter Shortbread Cookies
Adapted from Blue Ridge Baker who adapted it from Flo Braker
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, browned and cooled
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup granulated sugar

Sift or whisk the flour, baking soda and salt into a small bowl and set aside.  Transfer the browned butter to a medium bowl and add half the sugar, stirring until it's dissolved, then the other half, then the vanilla extract.  Stir the flour mixture into the butter until everything is combined, then let it rest for 10 minutes so the flour can absorb the butter.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Form the dough into small circles or balls and bake until they're golden brown around the edges, 15-25 minutes, depending on how large or small you've made them.

Let cool completely on a wire rack.

14 comments:

  1. I can never resist dulce de leche and yours looks gorgeous! I imagine with these cookies it would be rather addictive :)

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  2. Going to try a batch today and see if my are also too delicate and then let you know. Sometimes it can be the silliest thing.
    They look good though, great idea about using them in a crust, nice.

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  3. That sucks that the cookies were too fragile because they look amazing and the idea of sandwiching them with dulce de leche sounds DELICIOUS!

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  4. Hi Beth, Just discovered your blog through a comment on mine and so glad I did. Your work is beautiful. I have a soft spot for Buffalo...my whole family is from there :)

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  5. What a yummy looking treat! We're featuring cookies this week over at the M&T Spotlight and I'd love for you to submit this. http://www.makeandtakes.com/spotlight

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  6. that is such a yummy idea to sandwich them with dulce de leche:) i am craving for some of these right now:)

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  7. I love dulce de leche. What a great idea to use it and make sandwich cookies. I have a sweet treat linky party going on at my blog and I'd like to invite you to stop by and link your cookies up. http://sweet-as-sugar-cookies.blogspot.com/2011/02/sweets-for-saturday-6.html

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  8. Hmm, from your ingredients I suspect you may need a binder, so maybe if you add an egg it may be less crumbly? I'm going to try this out later, with an egg added, will let you know how it turns out!

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  9. I see what you mean, Jennifer! But shortbread is usually just butter + flour + sugar, no egg. Let me know how it goes! :)

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  10. I was going through my bookmarked recipes, and I realised I forgot to get back to you on this! I now feel a bit silly for suggesting the egg because I actually didn't know that shortbread doesn't have any :\ ...but the egg worked well to hold it together, and I used it as a very yummy base for tarts! Thanks for the recipe :)

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  11. Actually, this recipe worked fine for me when I tried it. I was only able to make like 15 cookies from it, mine seemed like they might have been slightly thicker than yours. Thanks for sharing the recipe though, these are great!

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  12. I am crazy about brown butter right now, so those cookies are bookmarked! Hugs!

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