Brown Butter Cookies

One of my favorite places in the world is San Luis Obispo, California.  I love everything about this town: the quirky downtown, the beautiful rolling hills, and the fact that you are in cow country and still five minutes from the beach.

While visiting this wonderful place I happened to discover a little shop called Brown Butter Cookie Company in Cayucos, a town about 15 miles north of San Luis. This cute business serves some of the greatest cookies I have ever tasted in my life.  They sell many different kinds, but their specialty is - as one could easily guess - the brown butter cookie.  This delicious confection is the perfect blend of salty and sweet, and it literally melts on your tongue.  No joke.

I was so excited to discover this cookie, but slightly put off by the big price. I can understand the struggles of being a small business in a small town and the need to generate an income, but these puppies are about the width of a golfball and they are $12 for a dozen.   Now, being the broke (and resourceful) college student I am, I took it upon myself to find, with the help of trusty Google, a recipe for these cookies. And, as luck would have it, I found one!

This recipe was created by Marina of Yummy Mummy Kitchen, with additional notes from myself.

Brown Butter Cookies 

- 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter

- 1/2 cup lightly packed brown sugar

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

- 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 

- 1 teaspoon baking powder

- Coarse-flake sea salt for sprinkling 

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. 

In a saucepan over medium heat begin melting the butter, stirring frequently. It will start to brown after about 10 minutes of cooking.  You will know it is done when you can smell a nuttiness and you see brown bits at the bottom of the pan. Be careful not to burn the butter.  

Pour browned butter into a bowl and mix in brown sugar and vanilla. 

In a separate bowl mix together baking powder and flour. Add flour mixture to butter mixture until combined. 

Let cool to room temperature.  Use a tablespoon or a small scoop to form cookies on the cookie sheet. Sprinkle the sea salt lightly over the cookies and press it into the top. Bake 15 minutes or until lightly golden.  

This recipe makes about 18 small cookies.  I know it's not a lot, but they are usually gone within 5 minutes of coming out of the oven so the amount doesn't matter that much :) Enjoy!

Beats

I love discovering new music.  There is something so exhilarating about finding a new artist or band that has created sounds you have never heard before, that inspires and brings about new emotions and feelings.

One of the newest bands I have discovered is one dubbed "Sucre", with singer Stacey King of the band Eisley, drummer Darren King of Mutemath, and talented instrumentalist Jeremy Larson.  This band mixes Stacey's dreamlike vocals with some very whimsical beats to form a completely different type of music than the kind heard on the radio nowadays.  They have one album out, A Minor Bird, that debuted April 10, 2012.

The music this band has created is so unique and impeccably created that my attention was caught right off the bat.  In my opinion, Sucre is similar to the artist Imogen Heap (hopefully some of you know who she is!).  Sucre's music is so different, though, that it's hard to find a correlation between them and other bands out there.  I believe this actually a good thing because it means that they have come out with music that is all their own.

Turning up one of Sucre's songs is the equivalent of crawling under the covers on a particularly cold night - warm, dreamy, and oh-so-sweet. With Stacey's silky voice and fantastic melodies to match, I hope that the minute you listen to this band you fall just as much in love with it as I have.