Last week, my church was preparing for a weekend getaway trip for our youth group to JP. Part of that getaway trip was offering a list of different workshops of miscellaneous skills the youth could learn, such as: crocheting, carpentry, or even painting. The workshop that I was assigned to teach was: baking. Part of that baking workshop was learning how to make brown sugar cookies, something that my friend/co-teacher suggested to make, in addition to chocolate chip cookies. She sent me the recipe for these cookies, which was from a book she owned, Cook’s Illustrated: Baking Book. For the sake of simplicity, I test-ran these cookies and made a half-batch.

The dough came together pretty straightforward. Interestingly, it all came together in a pot of cooled browned butter, rather than a mixing bowl. I guess it saves me the trouble from having scrape the browned bits into another mixing bowl. I mixed a separate bowl of brown and granulated sugars for rolling.

I rolled up the dough in 2-tbsp balls and rolled the balls in the brown-granulated sugar mixture. It reminded me of snickerdoodles, except there wasn’t any cinnamon involved.

Always as a precaution when making cookies, I always dock off a minute than what was stated in the recipe because I tend to overbake cookies. After baking it at 9-10 minutes at 350F, I took it out. Like a snickerdoodle, the tops looked pale/underdone and cracked but the bottom looked pleasantly brown and formed something like a foot, like what you would see on a macaron. After letting it cool, the cookies firmed up and I was able to spatula the cookies onto a plate.

For some reason, I found the bottoms really pretty with the granulated sugar bits sparkling.

I usually feel pretty meh about the sugar cookies but I actually liked the cookies. They were really chewy (probably from the brown sugar and the one egg white left out) and had a nutty, almost toffee-like taste, thanks to both the sugar and the browned butter. It was not cloyingly sweet. I ended up liking this cookie more than the chocolate chip cookies I’ve made in the past and these cookies took way less effort to make. I like these cookies.