what does milk powder do to cookies

A pro tip from a pro baker, for the best chocolate chip cookies youll ever meet.

My freezer is always stocked with chocolate chip cookie dough—theyre the ultimate anytime treat. There are thousands if not millions of chocolate chip cookie recipes out there. So its highly likely you already met your perfect match, whether you like them soft, chewy, crispy, or somewhere in between.

Im not here to convince you to try a different chocolate chip cookie recipe—I wholeheartedly support your choice! Im here to share with you a pro tip that can improve any chocolate chip cookie recipe: Add milk powder.

“Milk powder has an amazing way of adding a terrific baseline flavor,” she explains. “It can make ice creams milkier, denser, silkier—and cookies chewier.” It’s the sort of “secret weapon ingredient” that doesn’t taste like anything special straight out of the container, but works magic when it’s included in a recipe.

How To Use Milk Powder In Your Chocolate Chip Cookies

You can use milk powder in any chocolate chip cookie recipe. It does not require you to alter the other ingredients in any way—simply add one to four tablespoons, depending on how much flavor youd like. There are two options:

1. Add milk powder to the dry ingredients: It will blend right in with the flour, salt, and leaveners, and disperse evenly in the dough.

2. Brown the butter with milk powder: Just when you thought it couldnt get better than brown butter, it can with milk powder. If you’re using a chocolate chip cookie recipe that calls for browning the butter, add the milk powder to it. Itll caramelize along with the milk solids in the butter. The deeper the color, the more caramelized flavor youll get. For recipes that call for melting the butter, mix the milk powder into the melted butter.

Milk powder will give your cookies a rich, toasty quality that’s hard to replicate any other way. And soon youll be baking with it all the time.

What Is Milk Powder?

Milk powder is a dry dairy product made by evaporating milk until it turns into a powder. It’s a concentration of milk solids and the benefits are similar to using brown butter—the milk solids toast, get nutty, and delicious—only easier. You simply add the milk powder to the dough.

Adding milk powder to your cookie dough enhances the caramel notes and gives the cookies a distinctive chew and creamy quality. It gives the chocolate chip cookies a depth of flavor and a wonderful toasty quality.

One of the benefits of milk powder, unlike regular milk or butter, is that it has a very long shelf life and doesn’t require being refrigerated. Itll keep in your pantry for up to 18 months after being opened—if it lasts you that long since youll be wanting to make cookies all the time.

Milk powder is sometimes labeled as dehydrated milk or nonfat dry milk powder. I use Nestle Carnation Instant Nonfat Dry Milk, but whatever you can get your hands on will do the trick. If you can’t locate milk powder, you can use malted milk powder (dried barley, evaporated milk, and wheat flour), although it has a stronger flavor overall so you should use a little less.

Does Milk Powder make a better Chocolate Chip Cookie? | Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

FAQ

What happens when you add milk powder to cookies?

How does milk powder affect baking?

What does adding milk to cookie dough do?

Does milk powder make cookies better?

And often, mastering perfectly textured springy cake or supremely chewy-crisp cookies is more about baking technique than it is about ingredients. But recently, I learned that there is a single ingredient that can make almost every baked good better: milk powder.

Is powdered milk good to use?

The consumption of powdered milk is not contraindicated. In this case, the ideal is to give priority to brands that only have milk in the list of ingredients, vitamins.

Does milk powder work for chocolate chip cookies?

Milk powder will give your cookies a rich, toasty quality that’s hard to replicate any other way. And soon you’ll be baking with it all the time. A pro tip from a pro baker, for the best chocolate chip cookies you’ll ever meet. Add this one simple pantry ingredient—it works for every chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Can you add milk powder to cookie dough?

It’s a concentration of milk solids and the benefits are similar to using brown butter —the milk solids toast, get nutty, and delicious —only easier. You simply add the milk powder to the dough. Adding milk powder to your cookie dough enhances the caramel notes and gives the cookies a distinctive chew and creamy quality.