Buckwheat-Cardamom Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Ingredients

• 113 grams unsalted butter room temperature
• 105 grams dark brown sugar (or a mix of half and half dark and light brown sugar)
• 1+ teaspoon vanilla bean paste or extract (I used paste)
• 50 grams granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 135 grams buckwheat flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill brand)
• ½ teaspoon table salt
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom (I used a mix of Cloud Forest ground pods and regular ground cardamom)
• 50 grams semisweet chocolate bar chopped
• 50 grams bittersweet chocolate bar _chopped
• coarse salt to sprinkle on top

Instructions

1. Brown the butter: Place half the butter (56g) in a medium skillet and melt it over medium heat, swirling the pan occasionally. The butter will foam and froth as it cooks and start to crackle and pop. Once the crackling stops, keep a close eye on the melted butter, continuing to swirl the pan at intervals. The butter will become fragrant, and brown bits will form on the bottom. Once the bits are amber brown (about 2½-3 minutes or so after the sizzling stops), remove the butter from the burner and pour it into a small bowl, brown bits and all. Allow it to cool for 20 minutes.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the remaining 57g of butter with the brown sugar for 3 to 5 minutes, until the mixture is very smooth.
3. Beat in the vanilla.
4. Pour the cooled brown butter into the bowl along with the granulated sugar. Beat for 2 minutes, until smooth; the mixture will lighten in color and become fluffy.
5. Add the egg and beat for another minute.
6. Add the flour, salt, baking soda, and cardamom, beating on low speed just until everything is thoroughly combined.
7. Use a spatula to fold in the chopped chocolate.
8. Scoop the dough into 12 equal pieces (about 45g each). Place 6 balls onto each of two eighth-sheet pans and cover with foil. Refrigerate for at least one hour (until firm), or up to two days.
9. Preheat oven to 375°F. Arrange cookies on half sheet pans (no more than 6 per pan). Sprinkle with coarse salt.
10. Bake for about 10 minutes, until the edges are just starting to turn golden brown, doing the pan-dropping method after 6 minutes, after 8 minutes, and again after taking them out of the oven at 10 minutes.
11. Let cool on pan on rack for 5 minutes, then move the cookies to another cooling rack to cool completely.

Notes

23 May 2026: I made these today for the first time. I made half of the original recipe (the amounts and other tweaks I made are shown above), and I made the cookies half the size of the originals (they were still plenty large enough). I formed cookie balls using a 2-tablespoon scoop (the black Zeroll scoop) and refrigerated them for about 1.5 hours before baking 4 as a test. I baked them on a half-sheet pan lined with parchment on rack 2 for a total of 10 minutes, doing the pan-dropping method after 6 minutes, after 8 minutes, and again after taking them out of the oven at 10 minutes. I didn’t flatten the balls at all before baking. I let them cool on the pan for 5 minutes after removing them from the oven, and then removed them to another rack to cool completely.

24 May 2026: I baked the rest of the cookies (the remaining 8) that had been refrigerated overnight. I used the same process and timing for pan banging, but baked them for 11 minutes total because even though I left them out of the fridge for a few minutes while I was getting the oven ready, they were still probably a bit colder than the ones I baked yesterday.