By Lara Kimbrell

I was in the store with my kids a few weeks ago. We were on the baking isle, and as usual, my oldest son was obsessing over the selection of sprinkles. I was letting him have a look when my eyes happened to drift across the Carnation Malted Milk mix.

My eyes glazed over as I dreamed of ice cream malts and glasses of cold malted milk from my youth.

I immediately grabbed some and began brainstorming over what cool thing I could do with it. To this very day, one of my very favorite candies is Whoppers Malted Milk Balls. I think I could seriously eat my way out of a pool of them. So I thought about making a cookie to honor my “whopper” love affair! (pun intended)

Gather your cast of characters:

Malted Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

¾ cup brown sugar, packed

2 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 cup malted milk powder

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

12 ounce bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips

Extra chocolate chips for dunking/drizzling (optional)

Preheat oven to 350⁰. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or Silpat baking mat .

In bowl of electric mixer, cream butter and brown sugar. Then add eggs one at a time, beating well to incorporate. Add vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Mix until well incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips.

Oh, go ahead and taste it! Just save enough to actually bake some cookies! Ok?Use a cookie scoop to place 1 inch balls of dough approximately 2 inches apart on baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until beginning to brown. Cool for 3-4 minutes before transferring to wire cooling rack.

After all of the cookies were gone, I had a wonderful thought! Why not dip the cookies in chocolate in honor of my fave candy? Next time, I’ll do it!!

Optional: Melt additional chocolate chips. You can either dip each cookie halfway into the chocolate and let it harden on cooling rack, or you could place melted chocolate in a zipper bag, cut off a small corner and drizzle chocolate over the cookies.

If you taste the cookie dough before it bakes, you may think that there is too much malt flavor. However baking reduces the intensity of the malt flavor greatly. The first time I made these, I used 1/2 cup of malted milk powder and you could barely taste any malt flavor in the finished product.

So enjoy your cookies! I also think these would make delicious ice cream sandwiches. Oh, the possibilities… I think my yoga pants are going to become my best friend.

Keep lovin’ and keep cookin’!