COCONUT BROWN BUTTER COOKIES

Golden, butter-crunch, coconut cookie happiness.

"Dear John Macaroons, it's not you, it's me.  You're quite wonderful, marvelous even sometimes. (Waimea Coffee Company!!)  I didn't know it, but I am fickle.  I thought I needed and loved only your pillowy-chewiness.  Alas, I was only fooling us both.  Thank-you for being there for me in the past.  I will remember you with fondness....." was my first thought, when I eagerly munched into a just-baked, gorgeously deep golden, addictively-butter-and-coconut packed Coconut Brown Butter Cookie. 

"Oh my, where have you been all my life?!" 

I know, I know, I do get a little passionate carried away sometimes, but what can I say, these are damn good cookies, if you're of the coconut-cookie-liking persuasion, that is.  And I happen to be just that.

Once again, I have to throw kisses a big Thank-you to Deb of Smitten Kitchen fame for being obsessively driven to perfect her fave coconut cookie.  Who else, I ask you who, would have had the delicious abandon to combine nutty browned butter, nice big coconut chips and sea salt, creating a drop cookie-florentine hybrid of divine bite?

Look!!  When was the last time you baked cookies that had bottoms as nice as their tops?!  (cue applause)

These cookies are easy to make, but you do have to be mindful of the more exacting quantities that this recipe calls for.  And the moisture.  The recipe calls for adding 2 tablespoons of water to make up for lost volume when you brown the butter.  I found that I had to add 4 tablespoons of water to bring the butter back up to level. 

And then, once I was mixing the ingredients all together, some intuition whispered to me to add just one more tablespoon of water to get that 'perfect' moisture quotient to my cookie dough.  When I saw how the cookies baked up, I was very glad I added that wee bit of 'extra' water. 

And I say to myself, "What a fine thing to happen across the hubba hubba pairing of brown butter and coconut, cleverly cookied." 

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"Cookies are made of butter and love."
~Norwegian proverb

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COCONUT BROWN BUTTER COOKIES - Makes about 3 dozen

1 cup butter
2 or more tablespoons water
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
3/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
Slightly heaped 1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt or 1/4 teaspoon table salt
4 cups dried, unsweetened coconut chips (flakes) (see photo below)

In a medium pot, melt butter over medium heat.  It will melt, then foam, then turn clear golden (with a foamy top) and finally start to turn brown and smell nutty.  Stir frequently, scraping up any bits from the bottom as you do.  Don't take your eyes off the pot as it seems to take forever (more than 5 minutes) but then turns dark very quickly.  Once it is a deeply fragrant, almost nut-brown colour, remove from heat and pour butter and all browned bits, at the bottom, into a measuring cup.  Adding 2 tablespoons water should bring the butter amount back up to 1 cup.  If it doesn't, add another tablespoon of water, until you are at the 1 cup level. (I added 4 tablespoons of water to bring butter up to level, and then 1 more tablespoon to the dough when I was mixing) Chill browned butter in the fridge until it solidifies, about 1 - 2 hours.

Heat oven to 350F degrees.  Line baking sheets with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat.

Scrape chilled browned butter and any bits into a large mixing bowl.  Add both sugars and beat the mixture together until fluffy. Add egg and beat until well combined, scraping down bowl as needed.  Mix in vanilla.  Whisk flour, baking soda and salt together in a separate bowl.  Pour half of the flour mixture into butter mixture and mix until combined, then add remaining flour and mix again,
scraping down bowl, if needed.  Add coconut chips in two parts as well.

Scoop dough, by heaping tablespoonfuls (about 1 1/2 tablespoons) into balls and arrange a few with a lot of room for spreading on first baking sheet.  I baked 6 cookies at a time on 18x13-inch cookie sheet. Use the back of a spoon or your fingers to flatten the dough slightly. Bake first tray of cookies 9 -11 minutes; take the cookies out when they're deeply golden all over.  If cookies have not spread to be quite thin (as photo), stir 1 tablespoon of water into the cookie dough, mixing thoroughly, before baking off another tray.  This should do the trick, but if it does not, repeat the same with your next batch.  Once you've confirmed that you have the water level correct, bake remaining cookies.

Cool cookies on baking sheet for 1 to 2 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.  Cookies keep for up to one week at room temperature.  Munch, crunch, enjoy! 

The End!  Or is it just the beginning........

Here is the coconut that I used

Happy Coconutting!