Happy Friday everyone!  We are day 9 into our The 24 Days Before Christmas and this Brown Butter Pecan Cookie recipe is perfect for this time of year.  I dipped these Brown Butter Pecan Cookies in melted Nestle milk chocolate morsels, smothered the edges of the cookies in chocolate and topped with a chopped walnut and pecan mixture.  This cookie reminds me of a shortbread cookie, biscotti, and chocolate nut all wrapped up in one delicious, scrumptious, bite!  They are so easy to make!  You will love them :-).  This recipe was first found on Half Baked Harvest blog and I changed it up a bit and reduced the number of baking steps.

How to make Brown Butter Pecan Cookies

The main ingredient is the brown butter!  All I did was brown the butter in a pan until it became fragrant and bubbling, added the vanilla, sugar, brown sugar, and salt.  In the same pan, I combined all ingredients and slowly added the flour while mixing well.  I chopped up the pecans until they were very small pieces, dumped them into the dough, and mixed until all the little pieces were covered in the brown butter dough.

I used a large piece of wax paper, rolled out my dough into a log about 12-13 inches long and about 2 inches in diameter.  I wrapped the dough in my wax paper and refrigerated overnight.  If you don’t want to wait all night, you can refrigerate 3 hours.  I cut the dough log into 1 inch slices using a very sharp knife.  You have to use some power to your cutting because the dough has been refrigerated and is tough to cut. Don’t saw back and forth as the dough will break apart.  Just cut straight down.  Laying your dough on a cutting board will help.  If you cut to slow the dough will crack.  I carefully placed the dough cookies onto a cookie sheet and baked them for 14 minutes at 350 degrees.

A very important step in making these cookies

Let cookies bake on your baking sheet for approximately 10 minutes before moving to your cooling rack.  These cookies are a bit brittle out of the oven and will fall apart if you are not careful.  I did not do this.  Instead I added my chocolate and nuts while they were still laying on my baking sheet and then transferred them directly to my cookie tray.

Covering the cookie in chocolate and nuts (and sea salt if you like)

Once the cookies are done baking, I melted 1 11 oz bag of Nestle milk chocolate morsels in the microwave at 30 second intervals stirring in between melting points.  You don’t want your chocolate to burn.  Your chocolate is perfectly melted when it is creamy and dripping off your spoon.  I used a teaspoon to spoon out chocolate to cover one side of the cookie.  I had already chopped up a cup of walnuts and pecans and sprinkled the nut combination over the chocolate.  I then transferred them to my Pioneer Woman cookie tray (similar HERE).  The chocolate was still a bit runny and if that is a problem, just put your tray of cookies in the refrigerator for a bit until the chocolate hardens.  I did not use any sea salt because I used 1 stick of salted butter and 1 stick of unsalted plus salt is required in the recipe.

These cookies are not only Mr. TAL approved, they are family approved as well.  Everyone said they were a hit!  Enjoy!

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