Brown Butter Zucchini Miso Cookies

Brown Butter Zucchini Miso Cookies

In spite of my enormous sweet tooth, I never experimented much at home with pastry—that is, until last week. Flash back to the day I was cooking up a storm for Pittsburgh Food Not Bombs with my coworker Kayla. We settled on making a ton of zucchini bread. Long story short, the first two loaves burned. We scooped out the least-burned bits and reserved them for zucchini bread pudding. I took home the most burned parts, with which I made the most incredible burned zucchini bread miso.

You read that right. The idea came to me thanks thanks to a recipe I spotted long ago in Koji Alchemy for a burned bread amino sauce. I figured burned zucchini bread was pretty close, if not better!

Days prior I tried my hand at a batch of cocoa nib koji, the recipe also hailing from Koji Alchemy.  Sweet miso was already on my mind. The timing was serendipitous, but not premeditated!

I first tried miso cookies when I visited Larder restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio. Larder is the deli owned and run by Jeremy Umanski, the co-author of Koji Alchemy. Larder’s “magic miso” cookie totally blew my mind. It was so perfectly sweet and savory that it disappeared almost instantly. We ordered more for the road.

All I had to do was blend the ingredients together and salt to 5% of the weight. The miso tastes just like a cookie dough. Though the miso is not even two weeks old yet, I have made two batches of totally delectable cookies. Though they’re not as good as Larder cookies, I still like to think that they’re damn great nonetheless. The cookies are delectably nutty and butterscotch-like thanks to the brown butter. They're that perfect blend of sweet and savory that has you coming back for bite after bite.

This recipe was adapted from Catherine Zhang’s “Miso Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies” recipe. For my needs, I increased the amount of miso that her recipe calls for. Zhang uses pasteurized and store bought miso for her cookies, which surely has a higher salt content than my miso. Even with the amount of burned zucchini bread miso I call for in this recipe, you won’t have to worry about the cookies tasting overly salty. I also sub out some of the chocolate chips for pepitas, but feel free to use more chocolate if you like. 

For the cocoa nib koji:

• 1kg cocoa nibs
• 3kg tap water
• koji spores

For the burned zucchini bread miso (yields 1.3 kilos):

• 750g burned zucchini bread
• 525g cocoa nib koji
• 64g kosher salt

For the cookies (yields 18):

• 220g unsalted butter, browned and cooled
• 85g burned zucchini bread miso
• 200g brown sugar
• 140g white sugar
• 400g AP flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup pepitas (unsalted pumpkin seeds)
• A handful of chocolate morsels or chips

To make the cocoa nib koji: Vacuum seal the cocoa nibs along with the water in bags. Place the bag(s) in a circulated water bath at a temperature of 140F and let sit for one hour. Strain off the liquid and reserve. Allow the cocoa nibs to cool and slightly air dry on a tray for an hour. 

Dust the cocoa nibs with koji and mix thoroughly with clean hands. Transfer the koji to your incubation chamber and incubate at 77F and around 75% relative humidity. After 18 hours, mix the batch using clean hands to stimulate mycelium growth and oxygenate the koji. Check again at 24 hours, and then again at 30, tossing the koji with clean hands if the temperature of the koji spikes. The koji will die if it reaches temperatures over 113F. The cocoa nib koji should not be incubated past 36 hours. Let cool completely and store in the fridge. 

To make the burned zucchini miso: In several batches, blend all of the ingredients in a blender. If the mixture seems too dry, add reserved cocoa nib water or plain filtered water by the teaspoon until the texture resembles a tacky paste. Pack air-tight into a jar with weights over top of the miso. I use two Ziplock bags filled with water. Let sit uncovered on the countertop.

Miso ingredients, before blending

To make the cookies: Stir together the brown butter (you let it cool down, right?), eggs, burned zucchini miso, and sugars. Stir in the baking powder and soda, followed by the AP flour. I like to use my hands once I add the flour to ensure that the ingredients are completely homogenized, but you can use a stand mixer if you’d like. Lastly, sprinkle in the pepitas and chocolate morsels and give the batter one final mix. Portion out 18 cookie dough balls on a tray and chill in the freezer for half an hour or the fridge for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 360F. Place the chilled cookie dough balls on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Don’t overload the baking tray as the cookies will spread out. Bake the cookies for 15-16 minutes. Remove the cookie tray from the oven and place it on a cooling rack, leaving them to cool for at least 15 minutes. Unbaked cookie dough balls will stay fresh if bagged in the freezer. Simply bake for 15-16 minutes from frozen.