These Crunchy Low-Carb Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies are the ultimate keto treat. If you’ve been missing traditional cookies this holiday season, these buttery, chocolaty cookies are sure to hit the spot!
Today I’m joining in with the Sweetest Season Cookie Exchange and sharing a new favorite cookie recipe. Better than just cookies, we’re also raising money for our friends at Cookies for Kids’ Cancer.
The charity, founded in 2008, is committed to raising funds for research to develop new, improved, and less-toxic treatments for pediatric cancer. Over the past 10 years, Cookies for Kids’ Cancer has granted $15 million, funding 100 research projects, including 37 that are now treatments available for children battling cancer today.
If You’d Like To Join Us In Giving Back, Please Consider Making A Donation Through Our Fundraising Page.
Okay, so I know the title is a mouthful, but every word in it is important to note. That’s right, I made *crunchy* keto cookies. And then I upped the ante with some browned butter which gives them a wonderful toffee scent and flavor. And I went with both chocolate chips and chocolate chunks because there’s always room for more chocolate!
Crunchy keto cookies are something I’ve been longing for since I first started keto over 2 years ago. So many of the keto cookie recipes out there get most of the flavors right, but they end up with a doughy, cake-like cookie because of the almond flour. I have tried to love them, but I just can’t get behind cakey cookies. So since holiday baking season and The Sweetest Season Cookie Exchange are here, I decided I was finally going to solve my soft cookie problems. And boy have I! These are so much like “normal” cookies that even non-keto friends said they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
You’ll notice I’m going to get pretty specific in my recipe today. More than normal. Keto baking is a bit finicky because the ingredients aren’t as forgiving, so even small changes (like not measuring ingredients by weight) can make a HUGE difference. The big keys to crunchy keto cookies are the addition of a bit of coconut flour to the usual almond flour, using a super-fine blanched almond flour, some xanthan gum, pressing the dough down before baking, and baking them on parchment paper instead of the usual Silpat baking mats. They’re fine on the Silpat, but don’t spread out quite as much, so they just crisp better on the parchment. Trust me, 5 test-batches in and I have it down to a science.
The brown butter in these cookies is optional (you can swap it for regular butter if you want), but the extra effort to brown the butter seriously ups the ante on flavor. (Plus you can look super fancy when you tell people you made brown butter cookies.) Brown butter is also a bonus to pour over veggies or any other dish that could benefit from the extra toasty, nutty flavor. If you’ve never browned butter before, The Kitchn has an awesome tutorial here. You’ll need to give the brown butter time to re-solidify after you melt and brown it. I prefer to make the brown butter the day before then cool it overnight in the fridge and set it on the counter to soften to room temp in the morning.
This post contains affiliate links. When you use these links to make purchases, I earn a portion of the sales at no extra cost to you. Thanks for helping to keep our pantry stocked! <3
Print
Crunchy Low-Carb Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Prep Time: 20 min
- Cook Time: 18 min
- Total Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
- Yield: 18 1x
Description
These Crunchy Low-Carb Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies are the ultimate keto treat. If you’ve been missing traditional cookies this holiday season, these buttery, chocolaty cookies are sure to hit the spot! Just 2g net carbs per cookie!
Ingredients
- 120 g super-fine, blanched almond flour (I like Kirkland brand or Honeyville.)
- 16 g coconut flour
- 1 tablespoon Arrowroot Powder
- 1/2 teaspoon Xanthan Gum
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 150 g brown butter, cooled and softened to room temp (can sub regular butter instead) (Follow this tutorial for making brown butter and then cool it back to a solid state in the fridge overnight before softening and using in the recipe. Do not use it in the melted state or these won’t turn out.)
- 140 g brown sugar flavor erythritol (I like Sukrin Gold or Swerve Brown Sugar). Process in a food processor, blender, or spice grinder until powdered.*
- 3–4 drops liquid stevia
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 egg, room temperature**
- 75 g Lily’s dark chocolate chips + 75g Lily’s dark chocolate bar, broken into chunks (you can just use all one type if you prefer.)
- 1/4 C pecans, chopped
- Parchment paper
Instructions
Combine almond flour, coconut flour, arrowroot powder, xanthan gum, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl. Whisk until all clumps are broken up and the ingredients are well combined. You can also sift ingredients together.
In the bowl of a mixer with paddle attachment, cream butter for about 2 minutes on medium speed.
Slowly add the powdered golden erythritol and Stevia and cream for another 6-7 minutes. Scrape down the sides as needed.
Add the vanilla and room-temp egg and mix until they just begin to combine.
Slowly add in the dry ingredients and mix just until everything is combined. Scrape down the sides as needed.
Add in the chocolate chips and pecans.
Cover dough with plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. I prefer to use regular oven and not convection for crispy cookies.
Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper.
Using a #40 cookie scoop, this will make 18 cookies. Spread dough balls out on the parchment-lined pans and press each dough ball down about halfway. Press broken chocolate into the tops of the dough balls if desired.
Bake for 15-17 minutes, or until edges begin to brown. Allow cookies to cool on the pan. They will continue to bake and crisp up as they cool down. Store in an airtight container.
Notes
*This step is not absolutely required, but it will really help prevent the crunchy erythritol mouth feel in the final cookies.
**To quickly get a room-temp egg, place it in a cup of warm water for a few minutes.
Adapted from Gnom Gnom.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cookie
- Calories: 160
- Fat: 15g
- Carbohydrates: 2g net
- Protein: 3g
Pin These Crunchy Low-Carb Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies for Later!
One of my friends who’s been doing keto recently complained about not being able to find a good treat. And I cannot wait to forward this recipe to her because holy cow, Stephanie! This looks incredible and ALL the things you added to these cookies just make them decadent and perfect for sharing! (Or maybe just baking and eating all yourself? No judgment here!)
Thank you so much for participating in this year’s exchange and joining us in sharing some cookies and spreading the love!
Not going to lie, I definitely baked and ate this batch all by myself. Haha! It required 5 test batches to finally get these just right, so I had quite the cookie stockpile by the end. Thank you so much for sharing and for hosting such a wonderful cookie party each year! I love participating!
These are my absolute favorite keto cookie! I’ve made them 3 times. The browned butter adds an amazing flavor.
I am so glad you enjoy them Susan! Thank you for the review!
Just found your recipe while looking for crunchy keto cookie recipes and it sounds delicious! There are a few questions I have about using the brown butter:
1-Does the brown butter solidify after it has been transferred to bowl and is cooling down? Since the recipe calls for
“creaming” the butter and sugar, it seems like that might be the case, but doesn’t look solidified in final picture, and
maybe those instructions were meant for using stick butter.
2- If brown butter does not solidify and stays liquid, then I imagine it would not be “creamed” and you would
just stir to combine the brown butter with the erythritol and stevia?
3- Do you wait until the brown butter comes to room temperature as you would do with stick butter before baking?
Thank you in advance for your response. I know how important it is to follow directions exactly when baking!
Great question! You do want to let the butter re-solidify to room temp so you can cream it properly just like stick butter. That texture is important so the cookies don’t spread too thinly. If you use it while liquid this recipe won’t turn out.
I recommend browning the butter the day before you need it and then putting it in the fridge overnight. Then set it out to come to room temp again before baking the cookies. (You can also re-solidify at room temp, but it may take several hours.) It will look slightly separated when it re-solidifies. That will be fine.
I live in south Africa and am unable to source some the ingredients, and landed up with a crumby mess. Tasty, very tasty!! No crunch though
Oh no! I’m glad it was tasty, but I’m sorry it didn’t turn out for you. I’ve found that keto baking is super sensitive to changes. Even a brand change can result in a different end result sometimes. What did you end up substituting? Maybe I could help you find better alternatives?
I just found this recipe and can’t wait to try it but I don’t have arrowroot flour. Can I use more xanthan gum?
I haven’t tried this myself, so I can’t say for sure, but it’s probably the closest keto substitute. You might also try just leaving it out. It’s in there to make the keto flour combo behave more like regular flour though, so it may not be crunchy if you substitute.
Do you have the gram to ounce or cup or spoon measurements?
Veronica, I’m sorry I don’t. I don’t usually use cups or teaspoons when keto baking because even small weight changes can cause issues with the recipe. Weight is just so much more accurate than volume measurements. You may be able to use the nutrition information panel on your ingredients to make an estimation though.
I’m an avid home baker but never used grams, do I just weigh the gram items on my scale? it does weigh grams.
I’m trying to convert the flours, butter, sugar, and chips. My sister in law made your brown butter choc chips and experienced the flat cookie issue as did some of the other bakers… I think she didn’t cool the butter or the dough.. not sure I will ask. they were amazing flat but I want them perfect! lol
Yep! If you have a food scale, you’ll just use that to measure each ingredient. I usually like to put a small bowl on the scale, “tare” it/zero it so the weight is reset to zero and then measure my ingredient into the bowl. You can wing it when you get to the chocolate chips. I usually only measure those so I know the macros, but they shouldn’t throw the recipe off too much.
And thanks for the feedback. I just updated the recipe and post to make sure chilling the butter back to a solid is more clear.
Oops! I wish I had asked the butter question lol
Too late now as the dough is chilling in the fridge.
🤣
Ohhhh I just pulled them out. So far so good. No major spreading haha
They do taste a little salty though! I’m sure I only put 1 TSP of salt.
Might leave the salt out next time 👌👌
I’m waiting for them to cool, less one cookie haha
Mine didn’t get crunchy! Taste amazing but I am missing the crunch. What am I missing?
I’m sorry to hear yours didn’t get crunchy! What type of sweetener did you use? It seems that the brand and type makes a big difference to how crunchy they can get. Climate seems to make a difference too. My friend in Texas has a harder time with getting them super crisp if it’s especially humid. I live in dry Colorado, so we don’t have to worry about that.
Are the cookies crunchy?
If I don’t use the pecans, will that change the outcome? My wife isn’t a fan of nuts in cookies and I am making these for her
It should be okay without the nuts. It just may not make quite as many cookies.
I just made a double batch of these and they are amazing! It’s the first Keto recipe I’ve made in a year that was true to the crunchy statement. Thanks!
I live in Aurora, CO so not too far from you and I am so glad I found this recipe! It is SO SO good! I used a mix of lankato monkfruit and stevia the first time and they were so crispy – just a slight taste of that cooling effect but not bad and with the browned butter it really felt like a real regular cookie I used to make and I was in heaven. I used bochasweet yesterday and they came out SO soft so I’m not sure I’ll make them with that sweetener again but the cooling effect was gone so that was nice haha. But I have shared this recipe a bunch and love love love it!
Hi neighbor!! Thanks for your feedback. I wish we didn’t have that cooling effect either, but I can’t seem to make it go away completely and keep the crunch. I wonder what would happen if you did half and half of the two different sweeteners? I haven’t experimented with bochasweet yet, but it looks interesting.
I”m curious, which cookies recipe did you adapt from Gnom Gnom. I’m just looking/searching for a variety of crunchy keto cookies. Thanks. I plan to make these cookies today but with corn starch instead of arrowroot powder purely for the fact that I don’t have any arrowroot.
If you click the link where it says Gnom Gnom it should take you right to their recipe. 🙂
I would probably sub extra coconut flour rather than cornstarch if you want them crispy – cornstarch actually makes cookies extra chewy.
BEST Keto Chocolate Chip Cookie
Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite and these are the best ones I’ve tried so far. Most recipes I’ve tried so far aren’t even chewy, they are soft and fragile. BUT THESE are delicious, hold their texture, satisfy your cookie craving, and really make you forget you’re eating a low carb cookie. I’ve made these several times this year already.
I also love that you can use this as a base recipe for other cookies if you want to get this crispy texture.
I’ve been doing keto for a year and appreciate you creating this recipe!
So the crunch comes from the pecans?
No, the crunch comes from the science of specific ingredients and methods used to make them. You can leave the pecans out and still have crunchy cookies. 🙂
Like I mentioned above, the big keys to crunchy keto cookies are the addition of a bit of coconut flour to the usual almond flour, using a super-fine blanched almond flour, some xanthan gum, pressing the dough down before baking, and baking them on parchment paper.
Just made these today for the 1st time and although I wasn’t able to be as precise with the measurements because I left my food scale in Florida, they turned out delicious. I always weigh my measurements and I use grams instead of cups. I definitely had too much butter because the batter was very loose, so I added more almond flour. That did the trick. For Gluten Free and Keto recipes I find weighing is much better way to measure ingredients and my baked goods always turn out better. I had never made brown butter the correct way before and what a difference it made in the taste!!! When I made the butter the first time, I made it with salted butter and realized I should have used sweet butter. I kept the browned butter (salted version) to use with other recipes and it’s so delicious!! Thank you for a GREAT chocolate chip recipe. Definitely the best of all the versions I’ve tried on line and I love gnom-gnom too for most of many of my Keto go to recipes;-))))
Hands down the beat chocolate chip cookies I’ve made while on low carb way of eating! Besides not grinding the sweetener up I did follow the recipe as written. Thank you so much!
I just made these today because I am craving a crispy treat so much! I think the taste is good (for a low carb dessert) but disappointed that they are cake-like (soft) rather than crunchy. I substituted Guar gum for the Xanthan Gum and used Laksnto monk fruit instead of Stevia. All else was the same–I can’t understand why it’s so hard to get a crunchy result. Bummer!
I’m sorry these didn’t turn out crunchy for you. Unfortunately, I think it was the substitute of guar gum. Xanthan gum really is the key to helping these crunch – it helps starches combine to trap air. Keto baking really is quite finicky because we’re trying to mimick the chemistry of carb-based ingredients, and I’ve definitely noticed that even small variations and substitutions can cause issues in recipes. I hope you’ll try them again sometime with xanthan gum!
The batter for these cookies tastes great due to the browned butter. But it was quite wet even after chilling – is that correct? If not, what should the consistency be? The cookies spread out flat like pancakes and were soft, not crispy. I followed the recipe. Any advice or ideas what I can try next time to get crispy? Thanks!!!
Hmm. The batter should have been quite firm after chilling – the goal is to firm all the “softened” ingredients back up. I’d try chilling for a lot longer next time – the dough is almost difficult to scoop for me when it’s been chilled long enough.
Very crispy and yummy
Would allulose work in this recipe and keep things crunchy?
I have yet to do much baking with allulose, so I unfortunately can’t say for sure. I know it bakes up super similarly to real sugar, so I would guess that it would work great? Maybe start with a bit less than the erythritol measurement since it’s a tad sweeter per equal volume. I know for sure that you’d have tasty cookies, even if they were a bit softer. I’d love to hear your results if you decide to try it!
allulose needs to increase the amount for a sweetness factor…so every cup of sweetener, add 1 ½ cups of allulose.
Finally! a crunchy chocolate chip cookie that is keto. I know that some folks might feel it’s too high in carbs, but when you wanna stick to keto principles and need that sweet, chewy crunchy treat with your afternoon tea…THIS IS IT!!!!! Thank you!
p. s. For a chewier cookie, I melted my butter, but didn’t brown it and skipped the stevia. I recommend adding almond extract for a nice deep flavor. my preference.
Hi! Do you think tapioca flour can be subbed for arrowroot flour ? Read that they can be substituted for one another on some sites. Wondering what’s your take on that. Arrowroot flour in where I stay is really expensive!
Both arrowroot flour and tapioca flour are thickeners with similar properties, so functionally I think you can swap them just fine and still have good cookies. I’m not sure if they will stay crunchy though since I haven’t tested it.
I have been looking for keto crunchy cookies. Can I use xylitol instead of erythritol. I want to avoid the cooling effect of erythritol. But I want crunchy cookies. Please advise
No, unfortunately xylitol will not work as a substitute in this recipe. The chemistry is totally different than erythritol and I don’t think it will bake up crunchy. If you read through the post, I mention how some of the steps I take help mitigate the cooling effect. If you follow the recipe as written, it’s barely noticeable in the end product for me and I’m usually pretty sensitive to it.
Hi There! may I know how long will this cookies last if I store it in the container or plastic packages?
They should last as long as any other cookie would. Around 2-3 weeks if stored in an airtight container, though they’re best the first week. You can also store them, after baking, in the freezer for longer term storage. They lose a bit of crunch in the freezer though.
Hi. These cooked up and looked perfect. I too am in Texas and can see how humidity might affect them if they have been setting out for a while. But, right out of the oven (after cooling, of coursse), mine turned out very soft … cakey, actually. I used erythritol (Swerve brown.)
Thanks for a great site with lots of resources!
CORRECTION…
AS SOON AS these set for a bit, they became CRRUUNNCHHHYYY!!!
I am new to keto baking, so I was expecting the crunch to show up as soon as they cooled, but it didn’t
But 30 minutes later? PERFECT!
It seems that the flavor developed more (especially the brown butter notes) after setting for a bit.
I’m glad to hear they turned out crunchy after all! Erythritol is so finicky sometimes. Thanks for sharing!
CORRECTION…
AS SOON AS these set for a bit, they became CRRUUNNCHHHYYY!!!
I am new to keto baking, so I was expecting the crunch to show up as soon as they cooled, but it didn’t
But 30 minutes later? PERFECT!
It seems that the flavor developed more (especially the brown butter notes) after setting for a bit.
I live in Central Oregon where the climate is dry. I made your cookie recipe this past weekend and they were AMAZING!!! They are sweet and crispy. I added a full 1/2 cup of mixed chopped nuts to the dough: walnuts, pecans and almonds. I sprinkled a bit of salt on the top before baking. Three days later the cookies are as crispy and delicious as when they came out of the oven. My husband and I have been on the KETO lifestyle for 2 1/2 years, at my husband’s cardiologist’s recommendation. We are always looking for new dessert recipes. Thank you SO MUCH for this treasure!!!
I’m so glad you love them!! Thanks for the feedback!
I have tried MANY keto cookie recipes trying to get a crispy cookie and this one worked! They are SO yummy! Thank you!!!!
Did you bake yours 17 minutes? Mine weren’t crispy.
I’m bummed. They aren’t crunchy. I followed the directions and baked them for 15 minutes. I was afraid they would be burned if I went longer. But I now know how to make brown butter and it’s fantastic! The cookies are delicious and I will make them again. Just wanted crispy.
Any thoughts?
I’m sorry it wasn’t crispy for you. Some ideas: Did they crisp up any more after cooling? Did you use the exact same brands I linked in the recipe? Changing the brown sugar substitute seems to make them softer for some people. I only make them with sukrin gold. I also live in a dry climate (Colorado), so I don’t have issues with humidity. Are you in a humid location?
Maybe I should press them down more than half.
I used Swerve brown sugar. Our area is humid…Astoria, OR. They crisped up a very little bit after a while. Used exact ingredients. Anyway, they are the ONLY ones I will make going forward! They are yummy 😋 The brown butter made a huge difference.
Thank you so much for your response.
I am with you. Crispy cookies are more satisfying.