I grew up well after the era of the malt shoppe. I can’t say I’ve ever even seen one. We did have a sweet shoppe for a short while in town–a little bit of bliss on the corner of Water and Main–but they served ice cream and candy, if I recall correctly. No chocolate malts there. At least, I never had one. I’ve come across several recipes recently that call for malted milk powder, though, and curiosity finally got the best of me.
I know one store in town carries actual malted milk powder, but the one closest to home–the place I run to when inspiration strikes–did not. I had to settle for regular Ovaltine instead. I figured it wouldn’t matter anyway; I wouldn’t know the difference. I’m glad I didn’t waste the gas driving to the other side of town to hunt down the “real” deal. The Ovaltine worked just fine.
Some of this adaptation was intentional, but the milk was entirely accidental. I wasn’t paying close enough attention and misread the measurement. This error could have been a disaster, but the mistake turned out to be most fortuitous. The cookies are incredibly soft with the additional moisture: chewy and delicious.
Malt shoppe flavor at home. Ovaltine may just become a staple around here.
Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops
Ingredients
- 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup malted milk powder I used regular Ovaltine
- 3/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 11 Tablespoons unsalted butter cold and cut up
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup whole milk
- 2 cups chocolate-covered malted milk balls Whoppers, coarsely chopped
- 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips I used Guittard Super Cookie Chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
- Using a fine mesh sieve, sift the flour, malted milk powder, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until smooth. With the cold butter, you may need to turn up the speed a little bit, but your mixer can handle it.
- Add the eggs one at a time and beat each for a minute.
- Add the vanilla. The mixture may look curdled, but it will come together just fine when the dry ingredients are added.
- On low speed, mix in about half the dry ingredients until just incorporated.
- Beat in the milk until smooth.
- Mix in the rest of the dry ingredients until incorporated.
- Remove bowl from mixer and stir in the Whoppers and chocolate chips.
- Using a #60 cookie scoop, portion out the dough 2 inches apart on the baking sheets.
- Bake one sheet at a time for about 11 minutes, or until the cookies are puffed up and set.
- Leave on baking sheet for 2 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.
Notes
It’s almost here, folks! Let’s see what the others made for The 12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies & Sweets Blog Hop!
I wish I could bake too, so frustrating to live without oven. your cookies look awesome scrumptious, feel like having a bite now. Keep me some aside please! 😉
I love anything chocolate, these must be delicious with the chopped whoppers and chocolate chips 🙂
Those look super chocolatey and delicious.
These are beautiful! Thanks for the tip about the Ovaltine, I doubt my neighborhood store caries malted powder and I’ve been wanting to make these cookies. 🙂
It’s funny because the grocery store that carries malted milk powder doesn’t have dry milk, and the store that has dry milk doesn’t have malted milk powder. 🙂 Ovaltine works just fine. No need for special trips or orders!
those sound great, we put the whoppers in a ziplock and went crazy on it LOL.
Duh! Why didn’t I think of that? 🙂
Maybe because you are not as agressive as me, nothing better than beating the heck out of something to feel better LOL.
Although I haven’t had it in a long time, I do love Ovaltine! Might have to get some again to make these cookies–they look great!
I realize that this is an old post, but I made these tonight and just wanted to make a small correction. You may want to adjust step 3 to show that you need to cream the butter and sugar. If I didn’t bake frequently, I would probably have done the eggs and sugar together and not realized my mistake until step 4.
The cookies did turn out great for me! They are super rich and chocolatey. I also got 5 dozen from this recipe.
Oops! Thanks for noticing that! Yup, it makes a lot of cookies. Glad you enjoyed them!