Brown Butter Nillas
When planning the recipe calendar for my Bake Club, I often go back to the drawing board on the classic, undeniably delicious, sure-to-please-a-crowd desserts.
Everything from Fruit Roll-Ups to hand pies is fair game as long as it tugs at the right heartstrings. One such idea led me back to a grocery store classic:
Nilla wafers. I have memories of eating these delights at friends’ houses. (No way I was asking Greta to buy me some! Her response was always, "We don’t buy things we know how to make.") I was too slow to realize I should have just engaged her in a recipe testing session because though we knew how to make some killer cookies, we darn well didn’t know how to make Nilla wafers. So a few decades later, I set out to do just that.
Only I discovered that the ’nilla part was waiting to be deepened by one of my favorite flavor tools, brown butter, which also happens to amp up the sandie vibes in all the right ways.
Ingredients:
56g Brown Butter (recipe
follows), cooled
¼ cup
70g sugar ⅓ cup
1 large egg yolk
12g vanilla extract 1 T
95g flour ⅔ cup
1g kosher salt ¼ tsp
0.5g baking powder ⅛ tsp
Instructions:
Heat the oven to 300°F. Pan-spray or line a half-sheet pan with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
Grab a second half-sheet pan, flip it upside down, pan-spray its bottom (alternatively, cut a piece of parchment or grab another silicone baking mat), and put it to the side.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the brown butter and sugar on medium-high until smooth, about 30 seconds.
On low speed, add the egg yolk and vanilla, and paddle until smooth. Add the flour, salt, and baking powder and mix just until combined no more than 30 seconds.
Roll the dough into a log about 1 inch in diameter. Roll the log in plastic wrap and refrigerate until well chilled and firm, about 20 minutes. You want it to be sliceable without losing shape.
Slice the Nillas into ¼-inch-thick rounds and arrange on the first sheet pan ½ inch apart.
Cover the first sheet pan with the second prepped sheet pan, so that the bottom of the top sheet pan is pressing on the cookies, weighting them down.
Bake at 300°F until golden brown, about 18 minutes.
Cool completely on the pan before noshing or storing. If you have the willpower, wait for tomorrow-they’re even better on day 2!
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