My Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies {with Sno-caps!}

These are my favorite chocolate chip cookies. 

For the longest time, they've been hidden away on my blog, nestled inside this Cheesecake Cookie Sandwiches Two Ways: Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk & Strawberry Shortcake post. How have I never just written about my go-to, most-baked, most boyfriend-demanded chocolate chip cookies? 

Probably the same way I missed National Bundt Cake Day. 

P.S. Do you need a bundt cake? I got you. Try my Buttermilk Banana Bundt Cake with Brown Butter Icing, Zebra Bundt Cake with Chocolate Ganache Icing, Pumpkin Buttermilk Bundt Cake with Brown Butter Icing, or my favorite: this Cheesecake-Filled Gingerbread Bundt Cake. It's never too late to celebrate... or too early for gingerbread.

Today we're baking Sno-caps into our chocolate chip cookies... because there are red cups and wrapping paper and twinkle lights in the world and Sno-caps (semi-sweet chocolate chips covered in white nonpareil sprinkles and resembling snow-capped mountains) are the perfect holiday twist for easing ourselves into Christmastime baking.

Tis the season, I know.. but I'm totally not ready just yet for candy canes and peanut butter blossoms. Let's start with festive chocolate chip cookies!      

What makes these my favorite chocolate chip cookies? 

n  Brown butter. You know about my love for baking everything ever with brown butter and these chocolate chip cookies is where that love all started. Besides adding a nutty, caramel-rich depth of flavor, it gives these cookies a soft chewiness that can only found when you're baking with melted butter.    

n Molasses + dark brown sugar. Molasses adds a warm, just-slightly gingerbread flavor to the dough, while keeping the centers of these cookies just-baked soft for days. The dark brown sugar (which is just light brown sugar with even more molasses) works with the molasses to create one perfectly-soft, chewy chocolate chip cookie.

 Fact: No matter what I'm baking, I almost always reach for the dark brown sugar over the golden brown.  

n  Cinnamon. I'm almost always adding a little something extra to my cookie dough and that something is either in the form of cinnamon or bourbon. Bourbon accents the vanilla/caramel flavors from the brown butter and molasses and cinnamon makes the chocolate flavors really pop.

But be honest: who really keeps bourbon in their baking cabinet? I just don't have that kind of faith in myself.

  n  Triple chocolate chips. These cookies are similar to my Triple Chocolate Chip Cake Batter Cookies... they're full of semisweet chocolate, white chocolate chips, and crispy, sprinkle-covered Sno-Caps. My weakness? White chocolate chips in my chocolate chip cookies! 

Now if Nestle would just make a white chocolate version of their semisweet chunks.

Crispy edges. Soft, chewy centers that stay just-baked for days... if they even last that long. Plus those golden specks of brown butter I can't stop talking about, cinnamon, dark brown sugar, molasses, and as many types of chocolate chips as I can possibly bake into a cookie? 

It almost makes up for not having bourbon.

Almost.

P.S. I made these cookies Saturday. They were gone within four days. 

Brown Butter Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies

Printable Recipe

1 cup (2 sticks) + 1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon molasses

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup white chocolate chips 

1 (3.1-ounce) package Sno-Caps

Brown butter. Brown 1 stick plus 1 tablespoon of butter by heating over medium heat, whisking constantly, until golden brown. Once butter is browned, remove from heat and pour into a bowl to cool slightly. For more information on how to brown butter, see this post. 

Mix. In a stand mixture fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the other stick of butter with the granulated sugar until creamy, about 3 minutes. Add the vanilla and molasses and beat until incorporated. Add the slightly cooled brown butter and the brown sugar and mix on medium speed for about 2 minutes. Add the egg and egg yolk and mix until fully incorporated. 

Whisk. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda. Add all at once to the butter mixture and mix on low until just incorporated. Fold in the chocolate, white chocolate, and Sno-Caps with a wooden spoon or spatula.

Chill. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. (Tip: The longer you chill the dough, the thicker they will become when they bake!) Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. Scoop dough into balls using a small cookie scoop and place 2 inches apart on baking sheet.

Bake. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until cookies are just starting to turn golden brown around the edges. Remove from oven and let cool 5 minutes on baking sheet, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Source: Adapted from the Joy the Baker cookbook.

Triple Chocolate Chip Cake Batter Cookies { + Snowcaps!}.

I keep telling myself I'm going to start living this life right. In the moment. Totally inspired. Doing what I love. Chasing the day with a cinnamon roll in each hand and a pocketful of sunshine.  

I'm still thinking about pumpkin spice muffins, peppermint dreams, and pink heart-shaped sugar cookies. Somehow life has gotten away from me. Wasn't it just January? No way it's already summertime. Didn't I just blow out the candles on my birthday king's cake?  

Real life is a whole lot less sun-filled pockets. It's work. Work like... heaps of laundry, paying our phone bills, saying I'm going to go to the gym, five AM wake-up calls, and running out of coffee creamer, always. You know. Really real life.

Oh man. I'm 26... and my life has already become a list of things I'll get to someday.

Can I tell you my favorite part of the day? It's the twenty-five minute scenic, lazy, coffee-fueled/still-waking-up drive to work... where I spend every blissful moment daydreaming up an alternate life/what I would do if I didn't have to work that day. I would spend hours lost in a book, curled up in the corner of some coffee shop with an endless fountain of sugary iced coffee. I would work out. That's real. Let's definitely do that.

I would go on a nature walk. I would buy a plane ticket to Paris.. or explore a corner of town (let there be bakeries!). I would finally see The Great Gatsby. I would I would bake cookies with cake mix and three kinds of chocolate chips. Or something sugary baked in a mini loaf pan. Maybe I'd figure out how to bake madeleines... and then dip them in chocolate because live life.

Can we cross some things off together?  Let's grow and learn and adventure a little this summer.

There's so much living to be done in this world. Let's take back our lives and start living them. 

And let it all start with that lavender manicure I've been daydreaming about. 

And doughnuts.... there just needs to be doughnuts.

Let's stop making lists and pinboards and daydreams and just jump into it already.

Let's also jump into triple chocolate chip cookies... because these fluffy chocolate clouds are made of dreams.   

Dreams, Snowcaps, and chocolate cake batter. I can't even.

Light and fluffy as chocolate cake and as chewy and rich as a triple chocolate chip cookie. They taste like a cakier version of my triple fudge Oreo crunch cookies.  

Because cake mix!

For the triple chips I used white chocolate chips + Snowcaps + milk chocolate Hershey's baking melts. I used those chocolate discs to make the perfect, chocolatey layers in my brown butter bourbon chocolate chip cookies... and I am completely obsessed.

Just look at those cakey centers! I love all the sprinkles that end up in the dough. It's so festive and makes me want to celebrate... well, anything.  

A tip: 1/2 cup of Snowcaps = 1 (3.1 ounce) box. Maybe if I'd known this I wouldn't have so many movie theater candy boxes lying around...

I totally would.

Live life: put Snowcaps in your cookies, see The Great Gatsby, and hold me accountable! Let's make this summer count.

Triple Chocolate Cake Batter Cookies {With Snowcaps!}

Printable Recipe

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups chocolate boxed cake mix (I used Betty Crocker Super Moist Triple Chocolate Fudge)
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips (I used Hershey's Milk Chocolate Baking Melts)
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
1/2 cup Snowcaps candy (1 3.1 ounce box)

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, chocolate cake mix, cocoa, and baking soda. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the softened butter, sugar, and brown sugar until creamy. Mix in the eggs one at a time and the vanilla extract.

Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until just combined. Stir in the chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and Snowcaps.

Chill the dough for at least 1 hour. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Scoop chilled dough into rounded tablespoons using a cookie scoop and place on a lightly greased or Silpat-lined baking sheet. Keep remaining dough in the refrigerator until ready to bake with. Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes. The centers will still appear soft, but the cookies will set as they cool. 

Allow cookies to cool on baking mat for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. 

Source: Cake batter chocolate chip cookies + triple fudge Oreo crunch cookies.