Chocolate Malteaser cookies and cookie camps

I think I am obsessed with malt. I love malteasers, malted milk drinks, Malteaser cupcakes, and malted milkshakes.  I just love the flavour.

I think it's because the taste of malt reminds me of having hot Horlicks before bed as a kid.  It's a comfort taste and always brings a smile to my face.   Don't you just love how food can conjure up delicious memories?

This recipe for Chocolate Malteaser Cookies is another gem from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

It's a malt lover's dream cookie.  Really malty with big chunks of chocolate coated malt balls, it's not so sweet, wonderfully cakey and very very difficult to exercise any self control around.

Originally these were called Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops.  To translate for us Kiwis: Whoppers = Malteasers and drop =  drop cookies, presumably because you drop them on to the pan?  So I've renamed them just to be more decipherable for us down under.  A cookie by any other name will taste as good.

Now, you may not be aware, but everyone belongs to one of three very distinct cookie camps: Cakey, Chewy, Crispy.  Think about your top 10 most favourite cookies in the whole wide world and you will find that they will most likely all be either cakey, chewy or crispy.

To illustrate: if your favourite cookies are ginger kisses or Cookie Time chocolate apricot cookies, then you my friend are a Cakey.  If you like ginger nuts, or the normal chocolate chip Cookie Times, you are most probably a Crispy.  Chewies are a little harder to find commercial examples of but usually molasses cookies, homemade ginger cookies, or homemade chocolate chip cookies fall in to the chewy category.

Each cookie recipe will be chewy/crispy/cakey depending on the type of fat used, the ratios of fat to sugar to flour, the baking time and the different ways of mixing the cookie dough.

As for me, I am firmly in the Cakey camp.

So to warn all the Chewies and Crispies out there, these cookies are very cakey and you may want to bake them for longer and not beat the butter/eggs as much if you would like them to be less cakey.

What is also great about these cookies is that they are not too sweet at all so you can eat heaps of them at a time.  I think the secret ingredient must be the salt.  I have slowly come to the realisation that salt is really the the secret ingredient for sweet things.  In this recipe, there's quite a bit of salt, a whole teaspoon, which gives it the much sought after salty sweetness and just that little extra je ne sais quoi.

Chocolate Malteaser Cookies

from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

makes around 30 cookies

1 3/4 cup flour
1 cup malted milk powder (I use Horlicks)
1/4 cup cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
165 g unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup milk
2 cups Malteasers, chopped in half (that's roughly a 165g packet)
1 cup dark chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 175oC.

2. Sift flour, malt, cocoa, baking powder and salt.  The Horlicks will have little bits that will be left in the seive that you will need to tip back into the mixture and stir through.

3.  In a separate bowl, beat butter until fluffy around 1 minute.  Add half the sugar and beat for a minute.  Add rest of the sugar and beat for another minute.

4.  Add eggs one at a time and beat for one minute after each addition.  Beat in vanilla.  Your mixture should be super fluffy - this is the key to a lovely cakey cookie.

5.  Add half the dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated.  Add the milk and mix.  Add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated.  The mixture should be quite stiff.

6.  Mix through the Malteasers and chocolate chips with a butter knife.

7.  Scoop into walnut sized balls (~ a tablespoon) on to a lined baking tray around 2 inches apart.

8.  Bake one tray at a time for 11 - 12 minutes.  Let the cookies cool for around 2 minutes on the tray until placing on a wire rack to cool.

9.  Will keep in an air tight container for up to 4 days but are much better eaten sooner rather than later.