These gluten free brown butter cookies are thick bakery-style brown sugar cookies loaded with M&M’s that your Valentine is sure to love!
If I knew how tasty brown butter was, I would have tried it so much sooner in all my cookies. I can’t believe how much of a difference browning your butter makes in the overall flavor of these cookies.
These cookies are basically my gluten free chocolate chip cookies with M&M’s replacing the chocolate chips and brown butter replacing the butter. They’re a family favorite for a reason–they’re big and thick and so yummy!!
Gluten Free Brown Butter Cookies Ingredients
- Kim’s Gluten Free Flour Blend — you can use any gf blend you’d like, but I haven’t tested them with anything but my own.
- Baking soda — this is the only leavener aside from the eggs. It makes for a more dense cookie.
- Kosher salt — helps balance the flavors.
- Brown butter — gives a nice nutty, rich flavor to the cookies.
- Brown sugar — my recipe has lots of brown sugar and no granulated sugar.
- Eggs — hold everything together.
- Vanilla extract — boosts flavor.
- Dark rum — this is totally optional, but it adds a little extra flavor to the cookies and pairs really well with the brown butter.
- M&M’s — I’ve made these with a bag of Valentine M&M’s, but you can use whatever M&M’s you’d like, or even go traditional with chocolate chips or chunks.
Using Brown Butter as a Replacement for Softened Butter
It’s really easy to make brown butter and it can be substituted in pretty much any recipe you have for cookies or even cakes, but there are a few things to consider when doing so.
First, when browning the butter you don’t want to go past the point of no return. What I mean is you don’t want to burn the butter. You just want to brown it and create that rich, nutty flavor that’s so enticing. If you burn it, you’ll have to start over completely. So be careful and continuously watch it, swirling the pan all throughout to ensure it doesn’t get too brown (burnt).
Another thing to think about is if you’re substituting brown butter in a recipe that calls for regular softened butter, you’ll need to adjust the amount. When browning butter, the volume of the butter is reduced because the water content is cooked off. So 1 cup of butter that’s been browned is reduced to 3/4 cup of butter.
When making these cookies, the original recipe calls for 1 cup of butter. So I needed to bump up that amount to 1 1/2 cups of butter to make it to a full cup when all was said and done!
Making Brown Butter
Place the butter in a small saucepan and bring it to a boil over medium heat, swirling the pan gently as it begins to bubble. When it begins to foam, continue swirling and watching for it to turn from a light yellow to a deep golden color.
Remove it from the heat and pour it into a heat-safe bowl. Allow it to cool to room temperature, or refrigerate it to cool it down much quicker. Use it any recipe when you want a nutty, richer flavor.
Make these gluten free brown butter M&M cookies for your Valentine this year to show your love 😍💖🍪
Gluten Free Brown Butter Cookies
Ingredients
- ¾ lb (3 sticks or 339 g) butter
- 2 cups (454 g) tightly packed light brown sugar
- 4 cups (560 g) Kim's gluten free flour blend (or any gf flour blend of your choice)
- 1½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp kosher salt
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp dark rum, optional
- 1 10 ounce bag (283.5 g) Valentine's M&M's (or any M&M's or chocolate chips)
Instructions
- Brown butter first by placing butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat and swirling until completely melted. Once it begins to boil, keep swirling the pot until foaming subsides and butter is deep golden brown. Watch it closely so it doesn't burn.
- Pour the butter into a small heat-safe bowl and place in the refrigerator to cool.
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Cream brown butter and brown sugar on low speed in mixer bowl (stand or handheld) until combined. Increase speed to medium to medium-high and beat for about 4-5 minutes, until very fluffy and light in color. Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl.
- On low speed, add eggs, vanilla, and rum (if using) and mix to combine. Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl and blend for about 1 minute on medium speed.
- In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. With mixer on low speed, slowly add flour mixture to butter and egg mixture until combined.
- Remove bowl from mixer and stir in M&M's or chocolate chips by hand.
- Using a large scoop, scoop dough and place on parchment-lined sheet pans, about 5-6 per pan (these are large cookies).
- Bake at 325 for 20 minutes and no longer. Remove sheet pans from oven, but leave cookies on pans for about 3 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to finish cooling.