Chocolate Chip Cookies (Chewy)
I put smoked paprika on top of my chocolate chip cookies and my family staged an intervention. Then they tasted them. Intervention cancelled.
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, browned 2 sticks / 225g
- 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1.5 cups chocolate chips mix of semi-sweet and dark
- Flaky sea salt for topping
- Smoked paprika for topping just a tiny pinch per cookie
Method
Brown the Butter
-
Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. It’ll foam, then the foam will subside, and the butter will turn golden with brown specks on the bottom. It’ll smell nutty and incredible — like toasted hazelnuts. This takes about 5-7 minutes. Watch it carefully because brown butter and burnt butter are separated by about 30 seconds. Pour into a large bowl and let it cool for 10 minutes.
Make the Dough
-
Add both sugars to the brown butter and whisk vigorously for 2 minutes. This dissolves the sugar and creates a slightly glossy mixture. Add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla. Whisk until smooth and slightly thickened. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and fold with a spatula until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips. The dough will be soft and glossy from the brown butter.
Rest (Important)
-
Cover the dough and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight. I know waiting is painful. But resting does two crucial things: the flour hydrates fully (better texture) and the sugars concentrate (deeper flavour). Cookies from rested dough are noticeably better than cookies from fresh dough. Every time I skip this step out of impatience, I regret it. Every time I wait, I’m rewarded. The lesson is clear and I still struggle with it.
Bake
-
Preheat oven to 175C / 350F. Scoop dough into balls — about 2 tablespoons each. Place on lined baking sheets, 2 inches apart. Bake 10-12 minutes until the edges are golden but the centres still look slightly underdone. This is key — they firm up as they cool. Pull them out when they look not-quite-done and they’ll be perfect in 5 minutes.
The Finish
-
While still warm, sprinkle each cookie with a pinch of flaky sea salt and — here it comes — the tiniest dusting of smoked paprika. Not enough to see the colour. Not enough to taste “paprika.” Just enough to add an invisible layer of warmth and smokiness that makes people tilt their heads and say “what IS that?” That’s the goal. Mystery. Intrigue. In a cookie.
Notes
Room temperature in an airtight container: 5 days. Cookie dough freezes for 3 months — scoop into balls, freeze on a sheet pan, then bag them. Bake from frozen, add 2 minutes to bake time. Having frozen cookie dough balls in the freezer is the ultimate parenting insurance policy. Bad day? Fresh cookies in 14 minutes.
Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies — Brown Butter, Sea Salt, Impossibly Good
I put smoked paprika on top of my chocolate chip cookies and my family staged an intervention. Then they tasted them. Intervention cancelled.
I know how this sounds. Smoked paprika on cookies. But hear me out: a tiny pinch of smoked paprika on top of a warm chocolate chip cookie adds a whisper of smokiness that makes the chocolate taste deeper, the caramel notes in the brown butter more complex, and the whole cookie more interesting. You can’t identify it. You wouldn’t guess paprika in a blind tasting. But you’d know something was different — something that made this cookie better than the usual. That’s the Polish Mom touch: unexpected, subtle, and effective.
This recipe took me two years of trial and error. I tried every viral recipe, every “best ever” recipe, every technique from food science blogs. The winning combination: brown butter for nutty depth, a mix of brown and white sugar for chew, one extra egg yolk for richness, and an overnight rest in the fridge for deeper flavour. The smoked paprika on top was the final experiment, added on a whim because I put smoked paprika on everything, and it was the thing that elevated these from “great cookies” to “people ask me to bring these to every event.”
Ingredients
- • 1 cup (2 sticks / 225g) butter, browned
- • 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
- • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- • 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk
- • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- • 1 teaspoon baking soda
- • 1 teaspoon salt
- • 1.5 cups chocolate chips (mix of semi-sweet and dark)
- • Flaky sea salt for topping
- • Smoked paprika for topping (just a tiny pinch per cookie)
How to Make Them
Brown the Butter
Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. It’ll foam, then the foam will subside, and the butter will turn golden with brown specks on the bottom. It’ll smell nutty and incredible — like toasted hazelnuts. This takes about 5-7 minutes. Watch it carefully because brown butter and burnt butter are separated by about 30 seconds. Pour into a large bowl and let it cool for 10 minutes.
Make the Dough
Add both sugars to the brown butter and whisk vigorously for 2 minutes. This dissolves the sugar and creates a slightly glossy mixture. Add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla. Whisk until smooth and slightly thickened. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and fold with a spatula until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips. The dough will be soft and glossy from the brown butter.
Rest (Important)
Cover the dough and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight. I know waiting is painful. But resting does two crucial things: the flour hydrates fully (better texture) and the sugars concentrate (deeper flavour). Cookies from rested dough are noticeably better than cookies from fresh dough. Every time I skip this step out of impatience, I regret it. Every time I wait, I’m rewarded. The lesson is clear and I still struggle with it.
Bake
Preheat oven to 175C / 350F. Scoop dough into balls — about 2 tablespoons each. Place on lined baking sheets, 2 inches apart. Bake 10-12 minutes until the edges are golden but the centres still look slightly underdone. This is key — they firm up as they cool. Pull them out when they look not-quite-done and they’ll be perfect in 5 minutes.
The Finish
While still warm, sprinkle each cookie with a pinch of flaky sea salt and — here it comes — the tiniest dusting of smoked paprika. Not enough to see the colour. Not enough to taste “paprika.” Just enough to add an invisible layer of warmth and smokiness that makes people tilt their heads and say “what IS that?” That’s the goal. Mystery. Intrigue. In a cookie.
Why Brown Butter Changes Everything
Regular melted butter gives you a flat, one-dimensional butter flavour. Brown butter gives you toasted, nutty, caramel-adjacent richness that permeates the entire cookie. It’s the single biggest upgrade you can make to any cookie recipe, and it takes 5 extra minutes. The milk solids in the butter toast and develop hundreds of new flavour compounds. It’s basically the Maillard reaction happening to butter, and it’s the same reason brown butter makes kopytka taste so good.
Tips
💡 Pro Tips
✓ Rest the dough. Minimum 2 hours. Overnight is better. 48 hours is peak. The flavour difference is dramatic.
✓ Underbake slightly. Pull them when centres look soft. They set as they cool. Overbaked chocolate chip cookies are a tragedy.
✓ Mix chocolate chip sizes. Semi-sweet chips for melty pockets, chopped dark chocolate bar for chunks and pools. The variety of textures makes every bite different.
✓ Flaky salt on top. Maldon or similar. It adds crunch and amplifies every flavour in the cookie.
How to Store
Room temperature in an airtight container: 5 days. Cookie dough freezes for 3 months — scoop into balls, freeze on a sheet pan, then bag them. Bake from frozen, add 2 minutes to bake time. Having frozen cookie dough balls in the freezer is the ultimate parenting insurance policy. Bad day? Fresh cookies in 14 minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I skip the smoked paprika?
Of course. Without it, these are still excellent brown butter chocolate chip cookies. The paprika is the Polish Mom signature — subtle and optional but, in my biased opinion, what makes them unforgettable.
Why brown AND white sugar?
Brown sugar adds moisture and chew. White sugar adds spread and crispiness. The combination gives you cookies with crispy edges and chewy centres — the best of both worlds.
How many cookies does this make?
About 24-30 cookies, depending on how large you scoop them. I use a medium cookie scoop (about 2 tablespoons) for consistent sizing. Smaller scoops give you crispier cookies with more edge-to-centre ratio. Larger scoops give you thicker cookies with gooier centres. Both are valid life choices. In our house, I make half the batch standard size for the kids and half oversized for the adults, because grown-ups deserve big cookies and I will not be argued with on this point.