Name: Brown Butter Cookie Bars
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 80 min
Ingredients: ¾ cup + 1 tablespoon salted butter; 1 cup light brown sugar; ¼ cup granulated sugar; 2 teaspoons vanilla extract; 2 large eggs (room temperature); 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour; 1 teaspoon baking soda; ½ teaspoon fine sea salt; 1 ⅓ cup dark chocolate chips (or mini chips)

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With a toasted caramel flavour in every bite, these brown butter cookie bars are well worth the little extra time needed to brown butter! Almost like blondies, they have a sweet crackly top and loads of chocolate chips.

Four cookie bars turned up to show interior texture, with other bars around.

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Recipe Rundown: Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Prep Time
20 minutes

Cook Time
15 minutes

Bake Time
30 minutes

Servings
16 bars

Difficulty
Easy

Calories
295 kcal*

Primary Ingredients
Butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, flour, eggs, vanilla, baking soda, and salt.

*Calories are an estimation.

How This Recipe Works

Woman smiling, with long brown hair in a dark brown shirt.

Chewy, sweet, and with slightly crisp edges and tops, these are truly excellent cookie bars and are very easy to make, even if you're new to browning butter.

Brown butter is pulling its weight here, and it's the main flavour point in these brown butter bars. It's an otherwise very simple recipe, like a good chocolate chip cookie but in bar form (see our brown butter chocolate chip cookies).

While cookies made with brown butter need to be chilled before baking to prevent spreading, bars don't - the baking dish contains the dough instead. You can chill the dough for a more complex flavour if you like. More on this below.

I developed and tested this recipe, and taste-testers loved it. I made a batch to serve at a midnight coffee for my godmother's birthday recently, cut into 64 bite-sized squares, and her guests snatched up every piece. It's great for guests and almost universally liked.

Ingredients You'll Need and Why

You need standard chocolate chip cookie ingredients. The real difference is in browning the butter, so it can be cold to start with. These are our notes from recipe testing. You can find the full recipe card below with complete measurements and instructions.

Brown butter cookie bars ingredients with labels.

Butter: you must use real butter for these bars, not margarine or a vegan substitute. Only real butter will brown properly. We have tried it.
Brown sugar: we prefer light brown sugar for the slightly lighter taste, to allow the brown butter to come through more clearly, but it doesn't make a hugely significant difference. The bars will be slightly chewier with dark brown sugar.
Sugar: use granulated white sugar for the best results. Cane sugar can cause a pitted appearance.
Flour: all-purpose white flour is best. We don't recommend whole wheat flour for this recipe and haven't tested with gluten-free alternatives.
Eggs: large eggs weigh 57 grams in North America, so if you're baking from a different location, you can weigh them to make sure they're the right size for this recipe. We tested replacing one of the eggs with a yolk instead, but preferred the texture with two whole eggs instead.
Vanilla: a little vanilla extract adds a surprising amount of flavour to cookie bars, and they will taste flat without it.
Salt: same as vanilla - a pinch of salt adds complexity and offsets the sweetness just enough.
Baking soda: you don't want these bars to rise much while baking, so baking soda is used instead of baking powder. If you use baking powder, you'll end up with very cakey cookie bars.
Chocolate chips: try mini chips, as pictured here, for a chocolate that runs throughout the bars, rather than pockets of it. If you prefer individual bites of chocolate, use larger chocolate chips or chunks instead.

How to Make Brown Butter Cookie Bars

You don't need an electric mixer or standing mixer for this recipe, just a whisk. Brown butter can't be creamed with sugar so the texture will always be slightly different. We tested with mixing by hand and with an electric mixer, and it didn't have an impact on the bars.

Bars steps 1 to 4, browned butter, wet ingredients in a bowl, mixed, and eggs whisked in.

Step 1: start by browning the butter. See this post on how to brown butter for more guidance and tips. It's an easy process but the butter needs to be watched the whole time to prevent burning.

Step 2: transfer the butter to a large mixing bowl and let it cool for 30 minutes before adding the sugars. See the recipe card for a tip on how to quickly cool the butter if you're short on time. Do not skip cooling the butter.

Step 3: whisk in the sugar to combine, whisking rapidly until the mixture thickens slightly and lightens in colour. Whisk in the vanilla extract. If you have dodgy wrists feel free to use an electric mixer on low speed instead.

Step 4: beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well before adding the second egg. It should be quite a bit thicker once the eggs are incorporated.

Cookie bars steps 5 to 8, dry ingredients added, finished batter, before and after baking.

Step 5: sift the flour, baking soda, and salt into the bowl and mix to combine. Switch to a spatula for this step as the dough will be too stiff to whisk, and to avoid over-mixing. Don't mix the dough completely here.

Step 6: add the chocolate chips to the dough and fold them in to evenly incorporate. You'll finish mixing the dough now. This helps to prevent over-mixing, which makes the bars tough.

Related: Brown Butter Banana Bread

Step 7: spread the dough into a lined square baking dish, using the spatula to even it out as much as possible. It will be a fairly stiff dough, like cookie dough.

Step 8: bake for about 25 minutes, then cool fully in the baking dish (this is important!) before removing and cutting into pieces. The bars will be very soft when removed from the oven but set as they cool. The edges will be higher than the centre.

Expert Tips for the Best Bars

Cool the butter: if you mix the dough with hot brown butter directly from the pan, the dough will be very soft and sloppy, the texture will be all wrong, and the chocolate will melt. Do not skip the cooling step.
Chill the dough: if you know you prefer the flavour of cookies where the dough has been chilled (it's a little more complex), then chill this in the baking dish before baking. Cover tightly to prevent drying out and refrigerate for 2 to 24 hours before baking. Chilling before transferring to the baking dish makes it too hard to spread evenly.
Don't reduce the sugar: it acts as liquid in baking, and if you make these with less sugar, they will be dry and dense. It's better to choose a recipe that's been specifically developed to use less sugar.
Keep the baking time: over-baking will make the cookie bars dense, dry, and hard instead of chewy and soft. It will be very soft when you take it out of the oven, and needs at least a couple of hours to cool completely before slicing. It's a short bake but a long cooling time, so don't rush it.
Use two bowls: if you don't want to sift the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, you can mix them in a separate bowl with a whisk before adding.