Thick chocolate chip cookies

Browning the butter is the whole trick. You cook off water, so the dough is less likely to spread into a puddle, and the milk solids taste like toffee. Use a light-colored pan so you can see the color. Pull it when the specks are amber, not black. Burnt solids taste bitter and you cannot stir that out.

Cool the butter 10 minutes before the egg goes in. Hot butter scrambles the egg and the dough looks greasy.

Weights that keep the cookie thick

250 g all-purpose flour is about 2 cups plus a tablespoon, spooned and leveled. A scooped cup is closer to 150 g, and two of those make a dry, cakey cookie. Use the flour grams-to-cups chart if you are translating an old card. Light brown sugar is 150 g packed, about 3/4 cup on the brown sugar chart. The extra yolk adds chew without making the dough slack.

170 g of chocolate chips is one cup. The chocolate chip conversion is there if your bag is metric and the recipe you started from was not. Chopped bar chocolate melts into puddles. Chips hold their shape. Both are good. Do not do half of each unless you like a mix of puddles and chunks, which plenty of people do.

Chill, then bake

Thirty minutes is the minimum. The flour hydrates and the butter firms up. An hour in the fridge, or overnight, gives you a thicker cookie and a deeper flavor. Bake from cold. 180°C, 10 to 12 minutes. The center should look soft. It sets on the tray. Bake until the center looks dry and you get a biscuit.

No brown sugar? The brown sugar substitutes page covers white sugar plus molasses, which is the honest swap because that is what brown sugar is.