A wire cooling rack filled with malted chocolate chip cookies.

The Best Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Chocolate chip cookies are my lifelong favorite dessert. Is that basic? Maybe. Do I care? No. A good chocolate chip cookie is just better than most things. Despite my love for this classic treat, I didn’t have a recipe for them on the blog. It just felt redundant to put another chocolate chip cookie recipe into the universe. This one, however, feels warranted. These cookies are thin, buttery, chewy, and beautifully caramelized. Their secret ingredient (ok, not so secret since it’s in the title of this post) is malted milk powder. Y’know, the stuff in the inside of Whoppers. It adds a complex sweetness that just works perfectly in this recipe.

What exactly is malted milk powder?

I’ll keep this brief because I don’t really think anyone is here for a history lesson on malted milk powder. That said, the stuff was invented in 1896 as a nutritional supplement for infants. Nowadays, the stuff is mostly used for candy and milkshakes. It’s made of malted barley, wheat flour, and evaporated whole milk powder. An unsuspecting trio of ingredients that enhances any creamy desserts or baked goods that it touches.

You may be able to find malted milk powder at the grocery store. Probably in the baking aisle. If not, however, do as I did and order it off Amazon. I used this King Arthur malted milk powder and it worked like a dream.

How’d you get your cookies to be so flat?!

These are very flat cookies. And that’s by design. I wanted a cookie that was large in size and gooey on the inside with crispy edges. To make that happen, I knocked the air out of them. To do that, I simply dropped the pan on the ground a few times after pulling them out of the oven. Seriously, try it! Sarah Kieffer popularized this pan-banging technique. Her recipes instruct you to bang the pan every few minutes. And while that will give you a lovely rippled effect, I took a less hands on approach by banging my pan 4 or 5 times after pulling them out of the oven. It worked great!

Hot tip: if you want to pan-bang but don’t want to awaken (or scare the pants off of) your entire household, put a towel down on the floor and drop your pan onto the towel. I made these while my baby was asleep and she didn’t bat an eyelash.

Let’s talk about chocolate.

For these cookies, I used a mixture of semi-sweet chocolate chips and a chopped bar of dark chocolate. If you want the dramatic pools of chocolate you see in my cookies, I recommend doing the same. Bar chocolate melts better than chocolate chips, resulting in those lovely chocolate pools I mentioned a second ago. I used about half chips and half chopped chocolate, but you can go with whatever ratio you’d like.

Measuring flour:

Properly measuring flour can be a bit tricky. If you scoop directly from the bag with a measuring cup, you will likely get way too much flour, which can wreak havoc on your cookies. Instead, make sure to fluff the flour up a bit, then spoon it into a measuring cup and level it with a knife. Alternately, you can use a kitchen scale, but I know that not everyone has one of those, so it’s not essential!

Mixing your dough:

You’ll want to be careful not to over-mix your dough. Honestly, stopping my mixer just when the ingredients have combined has been a game changer in my baking. Especially for cookies. Basically, you don’t want to incorporate too much air into the dough. Too much air will result in a cakey texture, which is just not what we’re looking for here. So keep a watchful eye on your mixer. I promise you won’t regret it.

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Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies

Course Dessert, Snack
Keyword chocolate chip, chocolate chip cookie, Christmas cookies, cookies, Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies, malted cookies, malted milk
Servings 20 cookies

Equipment

  • Stand or hand mixer (You can also mix by hand, but I prefer using a mixer)

Ingredients

  • 8 oz Unsalted butter (227g)
  • 3/4 cup Light brown sugar (150g)
  • 3/4 cup Granulated sugar (150g)
  • 2 Large eggs
  • 1 tsp Vanilla
  • 2 cups Flour (238g)
  • 1/2 cup Malted milk powder (62g)
  • 1/2 tsp Baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp Salt
  • 2 cups Chocolate (I recommend a mixture of semi-sweet chocolate chips and a chopped bar of dark chocolate)

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350° Fahrenheit and line a large cookie sheet with either parchment paper or a baking mat.
  • Add flour, malted milk powder, salt, and baking soda to a medium bowl. Whisk together and set to the side.
  • Using an electric mixer, cream together the butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar. Once it's light and fluffy, stop the mixer and add the eggs and vanilla. Mix until just combined.
  • Add the dry mixture to the wet one and mix until just combined, being careful not to over-mix. Then fold in the chocolate chips and chunks.
  • Form into balls using a large cookie scoop or measuring spoon (your dough balls should be about 2 tbsp each), refrigerating unused dough while baking each batch. I was able to bake 3 at a time, but this may differ based on the size of your cookie sheet.
  • Bake for 12-14 minutes or until the centers are gooey and the edges golden and crispy. As soon as you pull the pan out of the oven, bang it on the counter or the ground a few times to knock the air out of the cookies. I banged each batch about 5 times. Repeat until you've used all the dough. Let cool and enjoy!

And that’s it! If you make these malted chocolate chip cookies I hope you love them as much as I did. Let me know what you think in the comments or on Instagram! Seeing your glorious creations always brightens my day.

Looking for more cookie recipes? Try my minty brownie cookies or my raspberry and ruby chocolate brown butter sugar cookies! Or if you’re more in the mood for a skillet situation, give my chocolate chip skillet cookie filled with miso caramel a go.

4 thoughts on “The Best Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies”

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