About These Brown Butter Chai Crinkle Cookies
These brown butter chai crinkle cookies are a unique take on the classic holiday crinkle cookie! Most holiday crinkle cookies are flavored with chocolate and cocoa powder. However, I flavored this crinkle cookie with the spices of the popular Indian black tea. Think: cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and black pepper. Additionally, the cookies are made with brown butter, which complements the warm flavors of the spices.
For more unique holiday cookie recipes on Hummingbird High, check out my Cookie Recipe collection! Other popular cookie recipes that people love making during the holidays include these Ube Crinkle Cookies and this Snickerdoodle Recipe Without Cream of Tartar.
And thank you to Land O’Lakes for sponsoring this recipe! Learn more in the blog post, and thank you for supporting the sponsors that keep Hummingbird High up and running!
Ingredients and Substitutions
Let’s talk about key ingredients and their potential substitutions:
- Land O Lakes® Unsalted Butter. Real Talk: Land O Lakes® Unsalted Butter is the all-purpose MVP butter I use in my recipes. To me, Land O Lakes® Unsalted Butter is the standard to which I hold all other butters. It improves every recipe—baking or otherwise—that I use it in. I love it so much that I even used it while testing all the recipes in my cookbook, Weeknight Baking!
- All-Purpose Flour. You can use a 1-1 gluten free all purpose flour replacer to make the recipe gluten free. I like Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour or King Arthur Flour Gluten Free All Purpose Flour.
- Kosher Salt. Kosher salt is the best salt for baking recipes. But you can replace the kosher salt in the recipe with table salt. Just use half the amount listed in the recipe when you do!
- Brown Sugar. Brown sugar is available in two varieties: light or dark. Dark brown sugar is my personal preference. Because it contains more molasses, I find it to be more flavorful. For these cookies, I encourage you to use dark brown sugar. The dark brown sugar really complements the brown butter and chai flavors of the cookies.
That’s a lot of spices. Do I really need all of them for these crinkle cookies?
Yes! Chai is known for its use of multiple spices. But don’t worry—if you don’t have all the spices I mentioned on hand, you can swap some of them out! I mentioned earlier that there is no “standard” recipe for chai. Although most chai contains cardamom, the rest of the spices are flexible. You can swap out the cinnamon, cloves, and even black pepper for other spices like allspice, nutmeg, and white pepper.
Can I replace the spices with chai tea for drinking?
Yes! If you don’t have spices on hand but have tea, you can use the tea in place of the chai spices. But if you do, I recommend that you grind the tea (similar to how you would grind whole spices) before using in this recipe. Use a spice or coffee grinder to grind the tea into a fine texture. You can see a similar technique used in my recipes for Earl Grey Chocolate Chip Cookies and Lavender Earl Grey Cookies.
Recipe FAQ and Troubleshooting
Help! My cookie dough was too sticky. It was hard to assemble the cookies. What did I do wrong?
Don’t panic! You probably didn’t do anything wrong. The cookie dough can come out too soft if the brown butter was still too warm. While it won’t be an issue to bake them as is, the cookies can be a little difficult to assemble with overly soft dough. Simply cover the bowl with the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour. After 1 hour, check the dough. It should now be easier to work with!
Help! My brown butter chai crinkle cookies came out patchy. They don’t look anything like yours! Instead, they absorbed a lot of the confectioners’ sugar while baking and have big tan spots. What did I do wrong?
Ah, yes. To get the signature crinkle cookie look, you need to coat the crinkle cookie dough in a LOT of confectioners’ sugar. Like a lot, lot. Every inch of surface area should have a thick coating of sugar. This is the secret to the classic crinkle cookie look!
Help! My cookies came out too puffy. They didn’t sink after baking and don’t look flat like yours. What did I do wrong?
Check out my troubleshooting guide on How To Fix Puffy Cookies (And Other Cookie Baking Fails)!
Can you freeze brown butter chai crinkle cookies?
Yes! You can freeze brown butter chai crinkle cookie dough.
To freeze the cookie dough, follow the instructions to scoop the cookie dough into balls. However, don’t drop them into the confectioners’ sugar! You won’t freeze them coated. Instead, scoop them onto a lined quarter sheet pan. If you’re not planning on baking them right away, there’s no need to space the dough apart.
Loosely wrap the sheet pan with plastic wrap and freeze for 1 hour, or until the cookie dough balls are solid. Place the frozen cookie dough balls in an airtight container or zip-top bag. Freeze for up to 3 months.
When ready to bake, there’s no need to thaw the dough balls! Simply place on a lined sheet pan to thaw slightly as you preheat the oven. Then, once the oven is preheated, toss each cookie dough ball in the confectioners’ sugar. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the edges have set but the centers are still soft.
Best Recipe Tips
Ingredient Tip
- Most baking recipes instruct you to sift confectioners’ sugar before using in the recipe. Confectioners’ sugar tends to clump when stored; sifting removes these lumps. However, you don’t need to sift the confectioners’ sugar for these chai crinkle cookies. Why? I find that the lumps in the confectioners’ sugar help coat the cookies more thoroughly. The lumps also break up into interesting crinkles when baked!
Technique Tips
- The brown butter needs to cool slightly before being added to the rest to the ingredients. Why? I instruct you to add the brown butter to a mixture made of the sugars and eggs. If the brown butter is too hot, you might accidentally scramble the eggs! To prevent this from happening, brown the butter first. Once it’s brown, immediately pour it into a liquid measuring cup to prevent it from cooking further. Place the measuring cup on a wire rack to allow it to cool more efficiently. While it cools, measure out the rest of the ingredients for the cookies. Doing so should take around 5 minutes, giving the butter enough time to cool slightly.
- In the recipe, I instruct you to scoop the cookie dough with a 4-Tablespoon cookie dough scoop. I then instruct you to drop the dough balls directly into the confectioners’ sugar and toss to coat. Don’t skip this step! If you drop the dough onto a sheet pan without coating them first, it’s likely that they’ll stick to the sheet pan. If you don’t plan on coating them immediately, I recommend chilling the dough for an hour first. Chilling the dough will make it easier to work with.
Styling Tip
- Coat the cookies generously with confectioners’ sugar. I mean it. Every inch of the cookie dough ball should be covered in a thick coating of confectioners’ sugar before baking. Uncoated areas show up as “bald spots” on the cookies, ruining their crinkle effect. Additionally, the cookies will absorb some of the confectioners’ sugar as they bake. So err on the side of caution and cover them with a THICK layer of confectioners’ sugar!
Get the Recipe: Brown Butter Chai Crinkle Cookie Recipe
Ingredients
For the Brown Butter Chai Crinkle Cookies
- ½ cup (4 ounces or 113 grams) Land O Lakes® Unsalted Butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
- 1 ¾ cup (7.85 ounces or 223 grams) all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 ½ teaspoons ground cardamom
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- pinch of ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ cup tightly packed (3.75 ounces or 106 grams) light OR dark brown sugar
- ½ cup (3.5 ounces or 99 grams) granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- ¾ cup (3 ounces or 85 grams) confectioners' sugar
Equipment
- a 4-Tablespoon cookie dough scoop
Instructions
For the Brown Butter Chai Crinkle Cookies
- Prep your oven and pans. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two half sheet pans with parchment paper.
- Brown the butter. In a light-colored saucepan, melt the Land O Lakes® Unsalted Butter over medium-low heat, swirling the pan occasionally, until it starts to foam. Use a heatproof rubber spatula to scrape the bottom and sides of the pan occasionally to prevent the milk solids in the butter from burning. Cook for 5 minutes, or until the butter smells nutty and is amber with dark flecks at the bottom of the pan. Remove from the heat and immediately pour the brown butter into a liquid measuring cup. Set it on a wire rack to cool while you prep the other ingredients.
- Make the cookie dough. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, and kosher salt.
- In a large bowl, mix together the brown sugar, granulated sugar, eggs, and vanilla until combined. Slowly pour in the brown butter while mixing continuously. Gradually whisk in the dry ingredients until just combined.
- Coat the cookies. Place the confectioners' sugar in a medium, shallow bowl. Use a 4-Tablespoon cookie dough scoop to portion the cookie dough into balls, dropping them directly into the bowl with confectioners' sugar. Toss until the cookie dough balls are completely and generously coated. Place the cookie dough balls at least 3 inches apart on the prepared sheet pans.
- Bake the cookies. Bake one pan at a time for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the edges have set but the centers are still soft.
- Serve and store. Serve warm, or at room temperature. The cookies can be stored in an airtight container or zip-top bag at room temperature for up to 3 days.
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Weeknight Baking:
Recipes to Fit your Schedule
Over the past several years of running Hummingbird High, I kept a crucial aspect of my life hidden from my readers: I had a full-time, extremely demanding job in the tech world. In my debut cookbook, Weeknight Baking, I finally reveal the secrets to baking delicious desserts on a tight schedule.
Did you make this recipe?
Please leave a comment and rating for the recipe using the form below!
Your ratings make it easier to find the recipe online, and I’m always looking for ways to improve Hummingbird High.
These are amazing! I used a smaller scoop just because preference but they’re so easy to make! They come together so quickly and the brown butter & chai combo is fantastic. Also this recipe made me realize that I’ve always under-sugared the outside of my crinkle cookies, great tip!
I think these might be my new favorite cookies! The tip about using a light colored pan to make the brown butter was super helpful and definitely made that step less intimidating. Once the butter is done the rest of the cookies came together pretty quick! They’re going to be a great addition to my holiday cookie boxes!
Tasty cookies! They made my kitchen smell amazing and are the perfect flavor of chai!
These cookies are amazing!! My mom is a chai connoisseur and absolutely loved these cookies! If you grew up in an Indian family and live off of Chai like most of us do, please try this recipe, you will not be disappointed. It will now be a staple in our holiday cookie baking!
This is a great snacking cookie – they’re BIG and delicious! I made them kind of spur of the moment; I wanted a treat, and all of the spices were stocked in my pantry.
The cookies came together quickly and easily, no real mess or fuss, though you will use 2 bowls and a small pan. And Michelle’s not kidding: make sure you coat the cookie dough balls in confectioners’ sugar; you’ll think you’re using too much but I promise the more you use, the better the crinkle turns out.
Baking notes:
* Michelle’s instructions for browning butter are among the most clear I’ve seen, so I think they’d be super helpful if it’s a new recipe step for you.
* I didn’t have a 4-tablespoon scoop, but I did have a 3-tbsp scoop, and that cut the cooking time down by a smidge but still made big cookies.
* I made the recipe using a kitchen scale for measuring the flour and sugars.
* I used a very finely ground black pepper, which I think worked really well.
This was really good! I flattened the balls out just slightly when I baked them and the consistency was perfect – crunchy on the edges and soft in the middle. A good amount of spice too!
I forgot to mention – the dough was quite sticky when I first made it so I chilled it in the fridge for a couple of hours and it was really easy to handle after that.
One of my go-tos! Thank you for sharing this!
What would you recommend as a substitute for the AP Flour for it to be gluten free? Trying to make this for someone with a gluten sensitivity 🙂
Hm, I would try a commercial GF AP flour replacer, like Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 GF flour or King Arthur Baking Company’s version.
These. Are. AMAZING. Despite my own mishap of completely forgetting to add the brown butter until *after* the flour mix was already in, they are SO DELICIOUS. Please please please do yourself a favor and make these! 😀
Delicious cookies! I follow a few baking blogs and I have never seen a chai crinkle cookie before – I love it! These turned out beautifully. Love the flavor! I made mine smaller so I made 30 instead of 10.
These are AMAZING! I just made them as my holiday cookies for the second year in a row. I love the way my house smells from making them! My friend who lost most of her taste due to chemo last year said they were the only cookie that tasted good to her. They are delicious! Will make these yearly now. I make them much smaller(1 TBS or so) and can get a little over 2 dozen each time.
These are a tremendous hit with family and friends. I used a 3T cookie scoop and voiced my opinion that I should have gone smaller, but everybody said the size was just right. Next time I will double the recipe.