Easily Upgrade Your Store-Bought Cookie Dough Mix With One Delicious Butter Trick

When baking season is in full swing, it can be a pleasure to luxuriate in the process of measuring, mixing, and combining ingredients for an elaborate recipe. But sometimes, the moments when we need a cookie the most are the ones when we have very little time to make some from scratch.

Fortunately, we live in a world in which boxed cookie mix exists. Thanks to these packaged goods, armed with just one or two staple ingredients (the butter in your fridge, along with a little water and sometimes an egg), you can still fill your kitchen with the fragrance of freshly baked treats with a fraction of the time and effort. But if you find yourself wishing your prefabricated cookie formula had just a little something more in the flavor category, you can add your own touch to it with browned butter. 

This magical flavor booster is the unbeatable ingredient for the best chocolate chip cookies, and takes just a few moments to make. And whether you're baking classic triple C's or your mix is for snickerdoodles, oatmeal, or peanut butter cookies, brown butter brings depth and caramel-esque complexity to every chewy, sweet bite for extra satisfaction in a snap. All you have to do is heat melted butter until it darkens and develops toasty, sweet-savory notes.

Browned butter (or beurre noisette) is an amazing result of cooking down your standard-issue yellow stuff. The process promotes moisture evaporation, concentrating the butter's flavor while its milk solids toast up in the bottom of the pot (which you'll be able to see, provided you follow a crucial tip and avoid using a dark-colored pan). These little brown flecks that pop up in the butter contribute a rich, warm, nutty note to your cookies.

Just be cautious to keep a close eye on the tell-tale signs that your brown butter is ready, as this stuff can scorch quickly. You'll also want to let it cool after browning if your mix asks for softened butter (if it's too hot and melted, you can wind up with cookies that have a greasy texture or spread excessively when baked).

You can easily swap in brown butter in equal measure for the plain butter called for on the cookie package — and it can substitute for vegetable oil as well. That said, keep in mind that you're cooking off some of the moisture from your butter, so it may be necessary to add a little water (about 1 tablespoon per stick of browned butter) to help your dough come together. From there, you can bake according to the instructions on your mix, then enjoy an upgraded experience that will fix your cookie itch, even when you can't start from scratch.