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Browned Butter Sourdough Molasses Cookies

5 from 3 votes
CHEWY, SOFT, and DELICIOUS! We love these!
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Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Additional Time 25 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes
Servings: 24 Large Cookies
Course: Desserts
Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients
  

  • 3 sticks salted butter 1.5 cups
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup molasses
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup flat and runny sourdough discard
  • 4 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 4 + 1/3 cups flour
  • Extra sugar to roll the dough balls in

Method
 

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium-high flame, stirring occasionally. After the butter is melted, keep cooking and it will begin to form bubbles and foam. Keep cooking and stirring over medium high heat. After a moment, underneath the bubbles, the butter will start to brown. Remove from heat. Set aside and let cool 30 + minutes.
  2. Cream together the cooled browned butter and sugars with an electric mixer for 2 minutes.
  3. Add eggs, molasses and sourdough discard. Mix well and beat until the wet dough appears fluffy.
  4. In a separate bowl, combine the baking soda, ground cloves, ground ginger, cinnamon, salt, and flour. Whisk together so there are no clumps. Add to the wet ingredients and mix well but don’t over mix. Dough will feel pretty wet. 
  5. Roll 1/4 cup of dough into a ball and do a single cookie test bake at 350 for 10 minutes. If the cookie turns out extraordinarily flat, you can add 1/4 cup flour to the remaining dough.
  6. Roll remaining dough into 1/4 cup balls and chill for an hour. 
  7. Preheat oven to 350 and prepare one or more 13x18 inch baking sheets with parchment paper or by greasing them.
  8. Roll balls in sugar and bake on an prepared 13x18 inch sheet at 350° F for 9-10 minutes or until barely cracked on top. Do not overbake or the cookies will turn out dry.

Notes

How to make browned butter?

Browned butter provides flecks of flavor and carmelization that only make the cookies more delicious. Browned butter also goes great with sourdough because the process of browning the butter also evaporates some of the extra water in the butter. Since the sourdough starter also contains water, this helps the dough be less water-wet and therefore helps avoid a puffy, cakey cookie texture. 

TO MAKE BROWNED BUTTER:

  1. Add the 3 sticks of butter to a sauce pan.
  2. Turn on the flame to medium high and allow the butter to melt. 
  3. After the butter melts, it will start to foam. Keep going. 
  4. Stir the butter over a medium flame as it continues to cook. While stirring,  you'll notice that the liquid under the bubbles starts to turn brown, and will develop brown flecks. Once the liquid is overall a brown color, remove it from the heat and let it cool.  
  5. Once the browned butter is cooled (at least 30 minutes) it's ready to be used for this recipe. It can stay at room temperature for up to 24 hours before adding it to this recipe. 
  6. If needed, you can store the browned butter in an airtight container and refrigerate for up to three days. Just let it come to room temperature before adding it to this recipe. 

Why sourdough?

Ok, I'll be honest. Not every baked good is better with sourdough. One time I made sourdough brownies and I had to throw them away, nobody liked them. Another time I made a sourdough cake and it was so crumbly and dry it was hard to eat. So adding sourdough to just anything isn't always guaranteed to make it better. But occasionally, when combined by specific recipe tweaks, it can improve the baked good. And this cookie is the prime example of something being improved by adding sourdough to it!
This is what sourdough discard does for these cookies:
  • Improves the texture, making the cookies more chewy.
  • Makes the cookies taste more buttery!
  • Provides a good way to use up some sourdough discard!
  • Ferments the flour making the cookies easier to digest
  • Provides some prebiotics to the cookies

What kind of sourdough starter should I use?

For this recipe you are going to use DISCARD. 
DISCARD is unfed, flat and runny starter. It will have no bubbles in it, and in texture it will resemble heavy whipping cream. 
This recipe won't work very well with active starter, since that will thicken the cookie dough too much. 
For more information on sourdough starter, I have a whole blog post dedicated to how to care for one and what it is.

Perfecting the cookie’s texture

Are you team cakey cookies? Or team chewy cookies? To me, the chewy factor is of super important!
Remember, you don't want to add too much flour. 

Too much flour = a cakey, puffy cookie.

Just barely enough flour = a chewy cookie

Not enough flour = extraordinarily flat cookie 

It's a delicate balance! 
It's helpful to bake a single cookie after you make the dough to make sure it's got the right amount of flour!