Brown Butter Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookies

We are leveling up these drop and bake sugar cookies with brown butter and vanilla beans! They’re so rich and buttery with incredible depth of flavor. However, they’re so quick and easy to make. These cookies are an instant hit, I just know you’re going to love them!

How to Make Brown Butter Sugar Cookies

What I love about this recipe is that there’s no down time. You don’t need to wait for the butter to cool or for the dough to chill. Just brown, mix, and bake!

This is because we’re only browning half of the butter. Not only does it allows us to have more control over the moisture content in these cookies, but by browning half and mixing it into the other half of chilled butter, there’s no need to wait for it to cool since the chilled butter does all the work for us.

Once the entire batch of butter is melted, we immediately move on to mixing in the rest of the ingredients.

The only important thing to note is that using European-style butter makes all the difference here. It has a richer flavor and slightly more fat, so it creates a buttery sugar cookie that tastes gourmet. I really love using Kerrygold here!

process shot mixing vanilla bean sugar cookie dough

process shot of rolled sugar cookie dough

process shot of freshly baked sugar cookies

Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookies

Now for the next major flavor aspect of these cookies, they’re loaded with vanilla bean seeds.

First, the dough is mixed with an entire tablespoon of vanilla bean paste. It injects so much flavor into these cookies with just this alone!

However, if you want to kick things up a notch, I like to add a teaspoon of vanilla bean powder into the rolling sugar. This is, like it says, dried and ground vanilla beans that almost acts like a spice. It adds so many beautiful specks to the outside of these cookies along with additional vanilla flavor.

Sugar Cookie Baking Tips

To get the most out of these cookies, it’s important to know when they’re done.

First, use a large cookie scoop (3 tablespoons) and roll in the sugar. Place the cookies a few inches apart as they will spread quite a bit. And since the dough is so soft, try to reshape them to be as round as possible once they’re on the baking pan.

Now bake starting with the lowest bake time suggested (10 minutes) and then add one minute on at a time until you reach the right doneness. For me, that was 11 minutes.

You’re looking for lightly golden and wrinkled edges with a puffed and slightly underdone center (see picture above). They’ll appear quite tall, but will flatten out and settle as they cool.

By pulling them when they’re slightly underdone, you achieve that rich and buttery center where each bite just melts in your mouth.

inside a brown butter vanilla bean sugar cookie

Brown Butter Sugar Cookies FAQs:

Can I make these sugar cookies gluten free?

Yes! Just substitute the flour with a gluten-free cup-for-cup baking flour. I like Bob’s Red Mill (the blue bag) or King Arthur measure for measure.

Can I chill the dough overnight?

You can! Just scoop and roll the dough balls in the sugar, then cover and chill overnight. Bake as instructed.

Can I freeze the dough?

Yes, scoop and roll the dough balls in the sugar then chill until firm. Toss the cookie dough into a freezer storage bag and store in the freezer for a few months. You can bake from frozen.

Where can I find vanilla bean powder?

I get mine from Amazon and this is the one I use.

Can I use vanilla extract intead?

Yes, you can use the same amount so 1 tablespoon in the cookie dough.

What is the lemon juice for?

Since we’re using baking soda and cream of tartar in these cookies, they need an acid to activate and since there’s no other acid in the dough (typically brown sugar), this is an added acid to get those leaveners to work.

How long do these brown butter sugar cookies keep?

I store these in a container at room temperature and they stay nice and soft for about 5 days!

brown butter vanilla bean sugar cookie bite shot

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