Thursday, August 28, 2008

Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops

I got an invitation to go to a Cookie Swap next weekend and take along a batch of my favourite cookies. Crikey, how does one decide which is one's favourite cookie? There's not many cookies I don't like, so I decided to get the family to help me decide. We pored over the cookbooks but Dorie Greenspan's book Baking: From my house to yours got the definite thumbs up from everyone so we made a short-list of cookies to bake this week....Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops, Granola Grabbers, Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters, Chocolate Chipsters and Chocolate Chip Cookies. See a theme occurring there!! This is such a fantastic book and it was very hard to limit ourselves to just 5 cookies.

Now, unfortunately, one of the cookie swapees is allergic to chocolate so that poses a small problem as all these contain chocolate apart from the Granola Grabbers. Imagine that...allergic to one of life's food groups!! So I thought about taking the Granola Grabbers and one other cookie.

The first cookie we made was the Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops. These are an absolute taste sensation....chocolately and soft with chunks of chocolate and malt. Mmmmm! They spread a lot so I was glad that I had actually followed the recipe for once and allowed 2 inches between cookies on the tray. Usually I cram as many as I can onto the tray!

I have no idea what Whoppers are, but they sound very similar to Maltesers so I used them instead. I also used Ovaltine as I am sure I would not find malted milk powder in my local supermarket. Everything else I kept as the recipe said.

Dorie also says they are great with ice cream too and she is sooo right. I crumbled up a biscuit into a bowl of French Vanilla icecream for dessert. It was like cookies and cream, but oh so much better!



Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops

1¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup Ovaltine
¼ cup cocoa powder
1½ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
4 oz unsalted butter, plus 3 tablespoons
⅔ cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup milk
2 cups Maltesers
1 cup chocolate drops

Sift together the flour Ovaltine, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed for about 3 minutes, until very smooth.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition. Beat in the vanilla; don’t be concerned if the mixture looks curdled-it will even out when the dry ingredients are added.

Reduce the mixer speed to low and add half the dry ingredients, mixing just until they disappear into the batter. Mix in the milk then the remaining dry ingredients, mixing only until they are incorporated. The batter will look more like fudge frosting than cookie dough-and that’s fine.

With the mixer on low, or by hand with a rubber spatula, mix the malted milk balls and chopped chocolate.

Drop the dough by rounded tablespoonful onto sheets, leaving about 2 inches of space between.

Bake for 11 to 13 minutes. When done, the cookies will be puffed and set but slightly soft to touch. Let the cookies the rest for 2 minutes before using a wide metal spatula to transfer them to racks to cool to room temperature.

From Dorie Greenspan's Baking: My house to yours


2 comments:

test it comm said...

These whopper cookies sound great!

Tammy said...

The whopper cookies are the TWD challenge for not next week but the one after - I look forward to making them now! I am going to use Horlicks as it is malted milk powder