There are a few recipes I’ve made dozens of times, and Sarah Kieffer of The Vanilla Bean Blog’s brown butter Chocolate Chip Cookies is one of them. While perfect as is, I’ve tinkered here and there, always adding flaky salt and chopped chocolate bars for maximum chocolate puddles.

A variation of these cookies is something I often make for friends’ b-days, adding cocoa and peanut butter cups, chopped Oreos, etc. The point is, the base recipe is very versatile.

For this recipe, I’ve leaned into the birthday theme by adding almond extract, sprinkles, white chocolate and decreasing the sugar a bit.

I like making these with a 4-tablespoon cookie scoop, instead of a 2-tablespoon scoop, so the chocolate and sprinkles have room to spread out.

If you’re wondering if these are fantastic in an ice cream sandwich, they indeed are.