Simple Savory & Satisfying: Spiced Rum Brown Butter Cookies

These cookies absolutely wowed me. I mean . . . they are out of this world good. Eric tried one and said, "There goes all that weight I lost." I think he was home from work for less than five minutes and had already devoured four or five of them. And he doesn't even care for spiced rum. But the spiced rum is the key to these amazing cookies. Their spice profile is like nothing I've had before. It's not the cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice that I'm familiar with yet my first bite made me think of Christmas. There is a warmth to the flavor of these cookies which makes them perfect for a cold snowy day. And the brown butter adds a nuttiness and complexity. Don't even get me started on how amazing the cookies smelled while cooking in the oven.

Recipe is from here.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 sticks butter
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons spiced rum*
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar, divided
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups flour
pinch of salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place 1/2 cup white sugar in a shallow dish and set aside.

Over medium heat, melt butter in a medium sauce pan. Continue to cook it until it turns a dark golden brown and gives off a nutty aroma, stirring occasionally. Allow to cool for appromixately 20 minutes.

Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl. In a second bowl (of the bowl of a standing mixer) mix together the cooled butter, egg, vanilla, spiced rum, brown sugar, and 1/2 cup white sugar. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients until well combined and a dough forms.

Roll about 1 tablepoon of dough into ball then coat in white sugar. Place dough balls about 2 inches apart. Bake for 8 to 12 minutes or until the bottoms turn a light golden brown.

*So I sort of made a rookie mistake while making these cookies. You're never supposed to pour your ingredients into your measuring cups over your mixing bowl. If you spill, you get the excess ingredient into what you're making. Same reason you should never crack an egg directly into your mixing bowl; you might get a shell in there. Well, my mixing bowl got a rather large extra splash of spiced rum. It made my dough a bit more wet than it should have been, but the cookies still turned out delicous. And I might just give them an extra splash again to give them that extra dose of flavor. But I know I will be making these cookies again. If Eric had his way, probably tomorrow.

UPDATE 1/11/14: So it seems that my mistake in adding more rum was actually the key to making these cookies so amazing. Add 3 to 4 tablespoons of rum instead of 2 tablespoons.