Drop-style brown butter sugar cookies are festively sprinkled, boast tons of flavor, and are ready in under an hour. This simple cookie recipe is an easy upgrade from classic sugar cookies—and will have you reaching for seconds.
Meet brown butter sugar cookies, a cookie whose flavor runs deep and is an easy upgrade from traditional sugar cookies. You’ll be surprised at how quickly and easily these cookies come together!
An Upgrade From Traditional Sugar Cookies
Traditional sugar cookies, whether that’s roll-out or drop sugar cookies, have their own distinct flavor. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but it’s somewhere in between sweet, butter, vanilla, and rainbows. I wanted to create a different kind of sugar cookie—one that could stand up to its big flavor besties—you know, the cookies loaded with chunks, nuts, molasses, oats, caramel, etc. Mission accomplished! Brown butter is always the answer.
These brown butter sugar cookies are:
- Drop style—no rolling pins, cookie cutters, or royal icing needed (try my cream cheese sugar cookies, drop style Christmas sugar cookies, and soft cakey sugar cookies for more no-roll sugar cookie recipes)
- Flavored with brown butter for an extra nutty, buttery flavor
- Topped with festive sprinkles—use your favorite colors or mix them up for different holidays
- Easy to make and ready in under an hour (just like my quick and easy shortbread recipe)
- Adorable and perfect for any gathering
Ingredients in Brown Butter Sugar Cookies
These cookies come together with only 8 ingredients (9 if you count the sprinkles)! Let’s review what you’ll need:
- Butter: We’re using brown butter in these cookies. Here’s a full tutorial on how to brown butter. (Use this one ingredient wonder in everything!)
- Flour: All-purpose flour is the base of these cookies.
- Baking Soda: Baking soda helps the cookies rise.
- Salt: Salt adds flavor.
- Sugar: To complement the brown butter flavor, you’ll use brown sugar in this recipe. However, to keep some of the traditional sugar cookie taste—we use some granulated sugar as well. An equal mix of both is just the flavor you’ll crave.
- Egg: One egg binds everything together.
- Vanilla Extract: Vanilla adds flavor. Try using homemade vanilla extract.
- Sprinkles: Sprinkles add a fun and festive touch!
Baker’s Tip: Even though we aren’t creaming butter and sugar together, I still recommend using a mixer to really get the sugar incorporated into the brown butter.
How to Chill Brown Butter Sugar Cookie Dough
This is a thick cookie dough. You *could* chill the dough and then roll into balls, but I found the dough a little too crumbly to roll after chilling. So I suggest rolling before chilling. This cookie dough isn’t all that wonderful for cookie cutter cookies—I had some crumbly issues. So I suggest sticking to drop cookie style. Easier that way, too!
Here’s what I do: After the dough is made, immediately begin rolling into 1 Tablespoon size balls and dunking into sprinkles—I like red and green nonpareils and/or gold sprinkles for these. After you dunk each one, place the cookie dough balls into the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. This will help solidify the butter so your cookies don’t spread all over the baking sheet. Likely happens when using melted butter!
Texture of Brown Butter Sugar Cookies
- Very soft in the centers
- Crisp bottoms
- Slightly chewy edges
- Crunch from sprinkles!
Taste of Brown Butter Sugar Cookies
- Brown butter-tastic, obviously
- Slight brown sugar flavor (for EXTRA brown sugar flavor, try my brown sugar cookies)
- Sweet vanilla
- Brown butter brown butter brown butter
A must-bake for your annual lineup of Christmas cookies? I think so!
Print
Brown Butter Sugar Cookies
- Prep Time: 45 minutes
- Cook Time: 13 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 36 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
Brown butter sugar cookies are easy to make, incredibly flavorful, and ready in under an hour!
Ingredients
- 1 cup (16 Tbsp; 226g) unsalted butter
- 2 cups + 2 Tablespoons (265g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup (150g) granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup (150g) packed light brown sugar
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- optional: sprinkles and/or nonpareils for topping
Instructions
- Brown the butter: Have a large heat-proof bowl handy. Slice the butter into pieces and place in a light-colored skillet. (Light colored helps you determine when the butter begins browning.) Melt the butter over medium heat, whisking occasionally. Once melted, the butter will begin to foam. Keep whisking occasionally. After 5–8 minutes, the butter will begin browning; you’ll notice lightly browned specks begin to form at the bottom of the pan and it will have a nutty aroma. See photo above for a visual. Once browned, remove from heat immediately, pour into bowl. Allow to cool for 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.
- Add the granulated sugar and brown sugar to the brown butter. Using a handheld mixer or stand mixer with paddle attachment, beat together on medium-high speed until relatively combined, about 1 minute. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract.
- Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and begin beating together on low speed, slowly working up to high speed until everything is combined. The dough will be thick and a little greasy. That’s ok! Just roll into balls as best you can in the next step.
- Roll the dough into balls, about 1 Tablespoon of dough each, and dip the tops into sprinkles. Place dough balls tightly together on a lined baking sheet (or a couple large plates). Loosely cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator to chill for 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. (Always recommended for cookies.)
- Line chilled dough balls onto baking sheets about 3 inches apart. Bake for 12–13 minutes or until lightly browned on the sides. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes then transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.
Notes
- Make Ahead & Freezing Instructions: Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week. You can make the cookie dough, roll into balls as directed in step 5 and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Allow to come to room temperature then continue with step 6. Baked cookies freeze well for up to 3 months. Unbaked cookie dough balls freeze well for up to 3 months. Bake frozen cookie dough balls for an extra minute, no need to thaw. Read my tips and tricks on how to freeze cookie dough.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Light-Colored Skillet | Whisk | Glass Mixing Bowl | Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Baking Sheets | Silicone Baking Mats or Parchment Paper | Cooling Rack | Red & Green Nonpareils | Gold Sprinkles
- I don’t recommend these cookies for roll-out/cookie cutter cookies. The dough is a little too crumbly for it. It’s easier to just bake as drop cookies. Enjoy!
I always am trying new brown butter cookies recipes. I’ve made chocolate chip and snickerdoodle but this was my first sugar cookies!! They turned out STUNNING , I wish I could include a picture. Idk why the comments are saying they melted when baking, you HAVE to refrigerate so the dough gets hard! I rolled mine into balls and flatted in the sprinkles then refrigerated. Turned out beautifully.
Too much butter! Cookies were flat and greasy. I made another batch and reduced to one cube of butter, not 1 cup!! Second batch turned out great! Also I added 1.4 tsp maple extract and 3/4 cup chopped pecans and topped with 1 half pecan.
I wish they had turned out like promised, but it seems like 2 sticks of butter was one stick too many. Cookies melted while baking and became nice and toasty, but too thin & buttery. I will try it again with only 1/2 cup butter instead of the full cup the recipe called for.
These cookies are totally addictive but mine keep spreading. I added an extra tablespoon of flour. I refrigerated the dough for 15 minutes, then rolled it (much easier to handle) and then refrigerated the rolled balls for another hour. Would adding an egg yolk help as suggested in one of the comments below?
Hi Laura, here’s out best tips for preventing cookies from spreading for next time!
Hi, Sally, I’ve used this recipe twice and still have not managed to get the texture of the cookies correct. Instead of “very soft in the centers,” and “slightly chewy edges,” I get a hardened cookie that is more like shortbread. I followed the instructions very diligently but still don’t know where I could have gone wrong?
Hi Elisa! We’re happy to help troubleshoot. How did you measure your flour? Be sure to spoon and level (or use a kitchen scale) to ensure it isn’t over measured, which can make cookies dry and hard. These are all our best tips to improve your next batch of cookies, which will be a helpful resource, too! Thank you so much for giving these a try, and we hope this helps!
Add an egg yolk whenever using brown butter.
Mine rolled into quick balls nicely, not sure why or what I did wrong compared to your notes. But the smell was amazing before cooking, I did a beautiful sprinkle of gold, yellow and white balls. Made a half batch incase they didn’t turn out right. But they are DELISH! just as described. Crispy outside, soft inside. Crunchy with my decor. Winner!
Apologies for asking such similar questions on two different posts, but if I wanted to add cream cheese to this cookie dough would I have to change much else?
Hi Quinn! It would take some testing to add cream cheese to this dough. Let us know if you try it!
I’m really excited to make this recipe today! Your recipes are always a hit! I’ve been looking for a sugar cookie dough I could stuff with cookie butter before baking but I’m worried this might not be the best recipe to try that with since you said the dough can be crumbly. Do you think this would work or do you have another recipe you could recommend? Thank you so very much!
Hi Michele! We haven’t tested it, but would try our drop sugar cookies dough instead.
The flavor of this recipe was fantastic, but browning all the butter meant that all the moisture in the butter boiled away. Then when mixed with the sugar, the sugar didn’t have any liquid to disolve in. The cookies came out firm, dry (like a shortbread), and with a grainy crunchy texture from the undisolved sugar. If I made these again I’d only brown half of the butter to get the browned effect but without the sugar crystals.
This is our family’s favorite cookie recipe every year. They are so ridiculously amazing (as are all your other recipes!). For any other readers- get that butter REALLY brown! It makes it so flavorful!
This recipe is delicious! Just made half the batch for my family and freezing the rest of the dough balls to cook later this week for a Christmas gathering.
I wanted to love this and followed the recipe. Browned my butter and let it sit for 5 minutes before mixing it and then chilled it in the fridge for 30mins before baking but they still melted into puddles. They still taste amazing but I’m so sad!!! Help!! Is it supposed to 1 full cup of butter?!
Hi Stacey, yes, you need 2 sticks (1 cup)/226g of butter, and then you’ll brown it. If you decide to try the recipe again, a little more flour will help, such as 3 Tablespoons. I’m sorry they did not turn out as expected!
Excited to try this! How many cookies will this make?
Hi Taylor, this recipe yields about 36 cookies. Enjoy!
Question! I followed the recipe to the letter, but for whatever reason, my cookies came out puffy! And very very crumbly. What on earth went wrong?
Hi Bee, how did you measure your flour? Be sure to spoon and level (or use a kitchen scale) to ensure it isn’t over measured, which can prevent the cookies from spreading (looking puffy as you mention) and leave them crumbly. Over baking can also cause cookies to become crumbly, so you can try reducing the bake time by just a minute or so next time. Hope this helps, and thank you for giving these cookies a try!
Hi Sally! I love all of your recipes, but your cookies are my favorite! I am worried to make these because I don’t like nuts. Just how “nutty” is the flavor? Or should I stick with your other amazing sugar cookies? Thank you!
Hi Celeste! Have you ever tried browned butter in baked goods before? It doesn’t taste overwhelmingly like nuts, per say, but it’s just a slightly elevated flavor compared to using regular butter. We hope you’ll give them a try!