Brown Butter Bourbon Cookies with Peanut Butter Butterfinger Caramel Filling
Brown Butter Bourbon Cookies with Peanut Butter Butterfinger Caramel Filling
Thick, chewy, brown butter bourbon cookies get stuffed with a delicious Butterfinger peanut butter caramel that creates this amazingly chewy center when you bite in. The entire cookie is studded with dark chocolate chunks, Reese’s peanut butter cup wedges, peanut butter chips, crumbled butter fingers and a hefty pinch of flaky salt. It’s a peanut butter lover’s paradise!
These cookies are extremely indulgent but so so delicious! The perfect sweet and salty dessert for those late midnight snack cravings.
Brown Butter Bourbon Cookies with Peanut Butter Butterfinger Caramel Filling
Serving: Makes 10 cookies
Ingredients:
Brown Butter Bourbon Cookies
1 stick butter (113 grams)
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar (125 grams)
1/4 cup white sugar (50 grams)
2 tablespoons of bread flour* (20grams)
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla paste
1/4 teaspoon bourbon
1/2 cup bread flour (75 grams)
1/2 cup all purpose flour (76 grams)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
Peanut Butter Butterfinger Caramel :
2 tablespoons of your favorite salted caramel sauce (40 grams)(I like Trader Joe’s)
1 heaping tablespoon of creamy peanut butter (30 grams) (I like using regular Skippy peanut butter)
2 fun size Butterfinger bars (37 grams)
Chocolate Peanut Butter Topping:
2-3 fun size Butterfinger bars
3-4 Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
1/4 cup Reese’s peanut butter chips
1/3 cup Good quality dark chocolate chunks (56% or higher)
Flaky sea salt
Method:
Make Brown Butter Bourbon Cookies
Melt butter on the stove in a medium sized pot until butter smells nutty and the color is a golden brown hue. Set aside to cool.
Once butter is cooled, add dark brown sugar, white sugar into the browned butter and whisk vigorously.
Add 2 tablespoons of bread flour to the sugar mixture. and whisk in to the mixture until it is thick and you no longer see any butter pooling to the sides.
Note: Adding a little flour during this step helps absorb some of that melted butter and helps develop chew and some lift to your cookies.
Crack one egg and one egg yolk into your sugar mixture and whisk until smooth and combined for a good minute or so.
Add vanilla paste and bourbon and whisk into the sugar mixture.
In a separate bowl, combine remaining bread flour, all purpose flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder and whisk until incorporated.
Pour the flour mixture over the sugar mixture in batches and using your spatula or a wooden spoon, mix until just combined.
Place cookie dough in fridge to chill overnight. No need to scoop just plop it in into a bowl with a lid.
Don’t skip this step, this is what lets your cookie dough develop flavor and firm up so it’s easy to scoop and give you nice thick chewy cookies.
Peanut Butter Butterfinger Caramel
Take two mini sized Butterfinger bars and scrape the chocolate coating gently with a knife and break up the Butterfinger bars with your fingers until they are all flakey and fine. Set aside.
Note: You can also whizz these in your food processor real quick too but they may not be as flaky.
Combine salted caramel and peanut butter and heat over the stove in a small pot until both are homogenous and combined without lumps. Once smooth and combined pull off heat.
Add the crumbled Butterfinger mixture into the peanut butter caramel and mix until full combined.
Pour mixture out into a bowl or container and let it cool completely. Set aside.
Note: I let mine cool down overnight so the mixture was not liquidy at all. It doesn’t need to be refrigerated.
Assembly
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and prepare a baking sheet with parchment liner.
Measure out chocolate chips and peanut butter chips as well so you have them ready.
Take out the chilled dough and use a small cookie scoop to scoop out all of the dough. You should have about 20 balls of dough. Flatten the dough lightly 1 or 2 times so they are about half the height. Pair off the cookie dough into sets of two so that you’ll have 10 sets of cookie dough discs.
Take the peanut butter caramel you made and divide it evenly into 10 little balls into the size of a small cherry (the caramel should be solid at this point). Flatten out each caramel ball slightly so its about the size of a half dollar coin, it should be smaller than your flattened cookie dough.
Take a set of cookie dough and sandwich the flattened caramel in between them. Seal the cookie dough edges together so no gaps remain. Roll the filled cookie dough ball so its nice and round. Repeat this step until you finish all the cookie dough.
Place 5 balls of dough on the baking tray, leaving about 2 inches or more of space between each. These cookies spread a lot!
Press in 4 to 5 pieces of chocolate chunks and 4 to 5 peanut butter chips into the top of each cookie ball.
Place cookies in oven for about 10 minutes to 12 minutes. It’s okay if they look slightly under baked, they will firm up as they cool.
While the cookies are baking chop the Reese’s peanut butter cups into eight wedges and chop the Butterfinger candies into very small pieces so they become very flaky and crumbly. Set chopped candies aside.
Once cookies are finished baking pull them out. If any cookies seem wonky or spread into each other slightly, use a cookie cutter or small sharp edged bowl larger than the cookies and scoot the cookies so they are put back into shape and are separated from each other. A little trick I learned from the amazing Cloudy Kitchen ;)
Once you finish scooting the cookies, top the warm cookies with Reese’s peanut butter chunks, butter finger crumbles, more chocolate chunks and more peanut butter chips. Fill in all those gaps!
Sprinkle a little bit of salt on each cookie and let them cool. Enjoy!
Notes:
* You can substitute the bread flour for all purpose flour if you are in a pinch and don’t have any but I highly recommend in buying some bread flour! They make your cookies divinely chewy!