I have a new cookie crush. You will too if you’re craving crispy, toasty, buttery, coconutty cookie goodness.
Coconut Brown Butter Cookies? Are you serious??? I’m a huge fan of anything coconut and truly, adding brown butter just takes these over the top!

I found the original recipe for Coconut Brown Butter Cookies on one of my favorite food blogs, The Smitten Kitchen, and I was entranced by the possibilities! She totally had me at toasty coconut and brown butter!

One of my goals with this blog is to find ways to make recipes a bit healthier whenever possible but still loaded with flavor. So, I began experimenting with some different gluten free options like almond flour and my all time favorite sweetener, coconut sugar.

To say they worked well is an understatement–they worked fantastically well! The cookies come out much darker than the original version (because of the coconut sugar, which is dark) but tender, crunchy, deeply coconut-y with the the warmth of the brown butter in every crispy bite! And if you love gluten free cookies, try what I consider the perfect gluten free Chocolate Chip Cookie.

It’s not a hard recipe at all but you do have to brown the butter which I’ll explain under Kate’s Tips below. The brown butter really makes these stand out and the smell of butter browning? A-mazing!

Coconut Brown Butter Cookies–Gluten Free

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted organic butter, browned*, cooled and solid
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 ¼ cup Organic Coconut Palm Sugar
• 1 large organic egg
• ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 ¾ cups almond flour/almond meal
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Slightly heaped 1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt
• 4 cups dried, unsweetened Flaked Coconut Unsweetened

1. Preheat oven to 350. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or a non-stick baking mat. I use Silpat mats: Non-Stick Silicone Baking Mat Set.
2. Scrape the chilled brown butter into a mixing bowl and add the coconut sugar. Beat until fluffy, scraping down the sides if needed.
3. Add the egg, scraping down the sides, and then add the vanilla.
4. Whisk almond flour, baking soda, and salt together in a separate bowl. Pour half of the flour mixture into the butter mixture and mix until combined, then add the remaining flour and mix again, scraping down the bowl if needed. Add coconut flakes in two parts as well.
5. Scoop dough into 1 or 2-tablespoon balls and arrange a few with a lot of room for spreading on the first baking sheet; use the back of a spoon or your fingers to flatten the dough slightly. I recommend no more than six cookies per baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
6. Remove the cookies from the oven when they’re deeply golden all over.
7.  If cookies have not spread as much as you would like, stir 2 teaspoons more water into cookie dough, mixing thoroughly, before baking off another tray. This should do the trick, but if it does not, add 2 more teaspoons of water with your next batch. Once you’ve confirmed that you have the water level correct, bake the remaining cookies.
8. Cool cookies on a baking sheet for 1 to 2 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack. Cookies keep for up to one week at room temperature. Extra dough can be stored in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for a month or more.

Kate’s Tips

• *How to make brown butter: (I took the explanation directly from The Smitten Kitchen recipe)

  “In a medium saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. It will melt, then foam, then turn clear golden, and finally start to turn brown and smell nutty. Stir frequently, scraping up any bits from the bottom as you do. Don’t take your eyes off the pot as it seems to take forever (more than 5 minutes) but then turns dark very quickly. Once it is a deeply fragrant, almost nut-brown color, remove from heat and pour butter and all browned bits at the bottom into a measuring cup. Adding 2 tablespoons of water should bring the butter amount back up to 1 cup. Chill browned butter in the fridge until it solidifies, about 1 to 2 hours. You can hurry this along in the freezer, but check back and stir often, so it doesn’t freeze unevenly solid.”

   

• Most kinds of butter will lose some water volume when browned, so you need to add enough water, up to two tablespoons, to make exactly one cup. European butter can be different, but you just have to measure it after browning. I used Kerry Gold Unsalted butter and had to add more than a tablespoon of water to make one cup.
• The original recipe calls for 1 ¼ cups plus 3 tablespoons of all-purpose flour. Using only that much almond flour caused my cookies to spread way too much, so I increased the amount of flour by ½ cup, and they didn’t spread nearly as much. I may even try using a full 2 cups of almond flour next time.
• These will spread, so don’t crowd your baking sheet!
• Try this savory, aromatic variation too. The ginger preserves and herbs sound amazing!
• To chill your brown butter quickly (in case you don’t want to wait two hours to make these!) place your measuring cup full of brown butter in a bowl of ice, and it will chill pretty fast 🙂
• These came out darker and flatter than the original version. They are crisp and delicate, more like a lace cookie or florentine. Absolutely addicting!
• You could dip these in melted chocolate or drizzle some on them, but maybe that’s taking it too far!

I’d love to hear how they turned out if you make them!