Carrot Cookies with Brown Butter and Pine Nuts

It’s been a boon for me and my carrots in the garden this year. The Shin Kuroda variety are stout, sweet, and the orangest orange while the Cosmic Purple variety always make my jaw drop with its stunning grape-magenta hue.

So when I finally harvested the remaining carrots to make way for the peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes (just in time for San Francisco’s indian summer), I knew I had to get crackin’ on as many carrot recipes as possible.

Enter: the carrot cookie. She has main character energy. She demands your undivided attention. I started writing this recipe after coming across Justine Doiron’s zucchini cookie where she browns the oats in the pan with the butter. I tweaked it using my doenjang chocolate chip cookie as a guide, and ended up with a perfectly chewy carrot cookie that’s crisp on the edges and tastes like carrot cake and sujeongwa aka Korean cinnamon punch had a cookie baby.

On a late summer evening when the sun’s going down, it doesn’t get much better than two of these cookies still warm out of the oven, sandwiched between a scoop of vanilla ice cream. And that’s exactly what I did — and you probably should, too.

Carrot Cookies with Brown Butter and Pine Nuts (makes about 30 cookies)

Ingredients

• 2 sticks butter (227 grams)
• 1 cup oats (80 grams)
• 1.5 cups plus one TBSP all-purpose flour (215 grams)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 large carrots, finely grated with microplane zester (160 grams)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 113 grams dark or semisweet chocolate (1 baking bar or about 2/3 cup of chocolate chips)
• 2 TBSP pine nuts

Step 1: Brown the butter. Prepare a large bowl of ice water and set aside. In a pan, melt butter over medium heat. Once butter is fully melted, add oats to the pan. Stir gently but non-stop until the butter froths and bubbles and the milk solids darken and the oats are lightly toasted as well. Transfer browned butter & oats to a large bowl and place atop bowl of ice water to cool as you measure your dry ingredients.

Step 2: Measure out dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, add flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and ginger. Mix to combine.

Step 3: Prep wet ingredients. Add both sugars to the bowl of cooled butter and oats and mix well with a spatula. Add egg yolk and carrot, mixing just until incorporated. Add dry ingredients and chocolate and mix to combine. Do not overmix.

Step 4: Rest. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 5 hours, ideally overnight. This step is essential so please don’t skip!

Step 5: Bake. Pre-heat the oven to 350dF. In a small sheet pan, toast pine nuts for 5 minutes until lightly browned. As the nuts are cooling, scoop 1.5 TBSP dough using a cookie scooper like this onto sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Top cookies with pine nuts. Bake for 9-11 minutes, until the edges are crispy but the center is still soft. Sprinkle with flaky salt if you’d like for an extra crunch. Highly recommend enjoying these cookies as an ice cream sandwich.