Butter Pecan Cookies

Butter pecan cookies are chewy, buttery cookies filled with pecans, white chocolate, and butterscotch chips. This crowd-pleasing cookie makes the perfect addition to your next holiday cookie tray.

These butter pecan cookies are the perfect fall cookie. They have a flavor reminiscent of butter pecan ice cream, with the texture of your favorite chewy chocolate chip cookie. They're easy to make at home with simple baking ingredients and make the perfect addition to your next cookie tray.

First, we'll start with a buttery cookie dough base made with a combination of granulated and brown sugars, which adds the perfect amount of sweetness and chewiness. Then, the dough is filled with plenty of chopped pecans, butterscotch chips, and white chocolate chips and baked to perfection in the oven.

Make these cookies for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any time you're in need of a sweet treat. They're sure to go quickly on any cookie tray!

Ingredients and substitutions

• Butter - Unsalted butter and the listed salt can be substituted with salted butter if needed.
• Sugars - We're using a combination of granulated and brown sugars for the perfect texture and chewiness.
• Vanilla extract - Adds flavor to the cookies.
• Eggs - Adds moisture and structure.
• Flour - I've only tested this recipe using all-purpose flour, so I can't say for sure how other flours would turn out. Have a different type of flour on hand? Instead of wasting ingredients, I highly recommend searching for a recipe that's written using the ingredients you have on hand.
• Salt - Enhances the flavor of the cookies.
• Leavening - Baking soda is needed for this recipe, not baking powder.
• Mix-ins - Pecans, white chocolate chips, and butterscotch chips give these cookies their butter pecan flavor.

Refrigerating cookie dough

I highly recommend refrigerating cookie dough for a few reasons:

• First, a chilled dough doesn't spread as much when baked.
• Second, the ingredients in your dough have time to meld and incorporate. I find that the flavor significantly improves using this method.
• Chilling dough, especially for at least one day or more, dries out the dough slightly. This concentrates the sugars, which creates a chewier cookie instead of a cakey cookie.

I like to make my dough the day before I intend to bake. This way it has an entire day to rest. If you don't have time, an hour in the refrigerator is fine.

Here's a great article from King Arthur Baking: Chilling Cookie Dough

Cookie tips and tricks

Check out my full post, 10 tips for baking cookies, for my best tips on baking a perfect batch of cookies. Here are my favorites:

• Room temperature ingredients - Room temperature ingredients mix together evenly to create a perfectly mixed dough (without streaks of unmixed ingredients).
• Bring ingredients to room temperature quickly - Slice sticks of butter into small, ½ inch slivers. Small pieces warm up faster than a whole stick. Place eggs into a bowl and cover with very warm tap water. They'll come to room temperature in about ten minutes.
• Properly measure your flour - The most common issue I see in baking is the improper measuring of flour. I highly recommend using a kitchen scale and measuring using the gram measurements in the recipe card. If you don't have a scale, use the spoon and level method. Stir your flour, then spoon gently into a measuring cup and level off the top with a knife.
• What happens if you add extra flour - By scooping flour with a measuring cup, you're compacting the flour into the cup and adding up to 25% extra flour to the dough. Extra flour can cause cookies to turn out dry and have a bland/flour flavor, instead of allowing the other ingredients (like butter, sugar, chai spices, and vanilla) to shine.
• Prevent spreading by lining your baking sheet - Use parchment paper or a silicone baking mat instead of greasing your pan. Adding grease to a baking sheet causes cookies to spread more while baking.
• Cookie scoop - Use a cookie scoop (I used a medium OXO cookie scoop for this recipe) for perfectly sized, round cookies.

Storing and freezing

Baked cookies will keep for up to 5 days in a tightly sealed container at room temperature.

To help keep cookies fresh, place a slice of bread in the container with the cookies. While the bread gets stale, the cookies stay soft and fresh. Replace the bread slice as needed.

Baked cookies (and cookie dough) can be frozen for up to 3 months in a tightly sealed, freezer safe container. Cookie dough can be baked from frozen by adding 1-2 minutes to your baking time. To thaw frozen baked cookies, place on the countertop to thaw for 1 hour or more.

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