Malted Milk Speckled Chocolate Sugar Cookies

MALTED MILK SPECKLED CHOCOLATE SUGAR COOKIES

4/10/2022

If you love malted milk robin eggs in the Spring (or Whoppers year around), you’re going to love Malted Milk Chocolate Sugar Cookies - rich in chocolate flavor and incredibly soft. Some like speckled eggs for Easter, but we love these cute speckled bunnies even more!

Malted milk powder amplifies the flavor of chocolate (much like espresso powder), joins the sugar in tenderizing the cookies, and adds an added layer of flavor that takes classic chocolate sugar cookies from good to great! Topped with a beautiful robin’s egg blue royal icing and decorated with a vanilla & chocolate speckle, these are almost too pretty to eat – but I’m sure you can convince someone to give them a try. Happy Spring!

Malted Milk Speckled Chocolate Sugar Cookies

WHAT IS THE SECRET OF PERFECT MALTED MILK CHOCOLATE SUGAR COOKIES?

To ensure the wonderfully soft chocolate sugar cookies of your dreams, you want to roll the dough about ¼-inch thick. This may seem too thick when you are rolling and cutting, but it’s absolutely key if you want perfect sugar cookies for munching and decorating!
The secret ingredient that makes these cookies perfect? Cream cheese and a touch of cornstarch keep these cookies sturdy, but still soft and chewy – almost like a Chocolate Brownie Sugar Cookie!
Malted milk powder amplifies the flavor of chocolate (much like espresso powder), joins the sugar in tenderizing the cookies, and adds an added layer of flavor that takes classic malted milk chocolate sugar cookies from good to great!
Just a touch of tiny semi-sweet chocolate bits baked in the cookie dough make these doubly chocolate and so melty-good!
If you’ve found your cut-out sugar cookies lose their shape in the past, it could have been due to a few factors (too much butter in the recipe, dough too warm, dough not rolled thick enough, etc.), but I can tell you that this recipe yields absolutely beautiful edges that do not spread if you take care to roll to the appropriate thickness (if rolled too thin then they can spread) and chill the cut-out dough before baking.

Malted Milk Speckled Chocolate Sugar Cookies

MALTED MILK CHOCOLATE SUGAR COOKIE TIPS & TRICKS:

Baking sheets: I use my favorite USA Pan Bakeware half sheet pans, which are aluminized steel, warp resistant and nonstick. I always line with parchment paper, not a silicone baking mat (which I find causes more spread).

Cocoa Powder: For this recipe you can use either Dutch-processed or natural cocoa powder. Dutch-processed cocoa powder is typically paired with baking powder, but either works for this cookie recipe. Always use the best quality baking cocoa for the best results!
Sifting: Sifting the flour and cocoa powder together is imperative to ensure the two are perfectly blended and aerated, and eliminates any lumps!
Marble pastry board: This isn’t necessary, but if you have one, it’s great for keeping sugar cookie dough and pie crust cold!
Rolling pin: A simple wooden one is all you need, but my favorite is my Joseph Joseph Wooden Rolling Pin with adjustable rollers.
Flavors: I adore the pure vanilla flavor, but some people like a little bit of almond – I would recommend starting with ¼ teaspoon of almond extract in addition to the vanilla. For other fun-flavored sugar cookies, you can also replace the vanilla with your favorite extract or emulsion to the cookie dough if you’d like!
Cookie cutters: You can use absolutely any, so pick your favorites! I have a mixture of plastic and metal and they all work amazingly well with this recipe. It holds its shape for intricate designs, as well. I always dip mine in flour before cutting for a nice, clean release.
Scaling: You can double (or more!) this recipe without issue.
Buttercream frosting: If you want to do a simple frosting (with or without sprinkles!), then I recommend my favorite Vanilla Buttercream or Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.
Royal Icing: To do more detailed decorating, I prefer to use Royal Icing.
Storage: The cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
Make-Ahead: While I love that you can whip up these cookies immediately, you can mix together the dough, divide in half and form into disks, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for up to 2 days. You can also freeze the dough (place the wrapped disk in a ziploc freezer bag) for up to 1 month; thaw in the refrigerator overnight, then bring it to almost room temperature, roll out, and proceed with the recipe.
Freezing: These cookies freeze exceptionally well! You can freeze them plain or decorated; if decorated, let the icing set before freezing. Store in an airtight container or ziplock freezer bag with parchment paper between the layers. The cookies can be frozen for up to 3 months.

Malted Milk Speckled Chocolate Sugar Cookies

THE SECRET TO SIMPLE DECORATING WITH ROYAL ICING:

Sifting: Sifting the powdered sugar to eliminate any lumps in your icing – this is critical. If you are using cocoa powder in your icing, make sure to sift that as well!
Corn Syrup: Adds a sheen and soft bite to Chocolate Royal Icing, but it will take a bit longer to dry than standard Royal Icing. I find that it usually takes overnight for the icing to set and dry properly.
Consistency: There are three primary consistencies for Royal Icing – Outline, Flood, and Detail.
Coloring: There is no shortcut to great Royal Icing colors! Start with a great royal icing recipe, and use quality gel food coloring to get the best results. I recommend and use AmeriColor gel food coloring. Start with a few drops and add more food coloring only as necessary. Note that the colors will darken as they sit.
Decorating with Dark Colors: For deep or dark colors, you will use more food coloring, and for deepest black, red and green colors, for best results I make the royal icing and color the day before I’ll be decorating. It takes time and patience for the colors to fully develop.
Color Bleeding: To prevent colors from bleeding into one another, start by coloring your base recipe of Royal Icing with White food coloring. Sounds crazy, but it helps!
Take your Time: Allow each layer of icing to dry completely before adding the next layer.

Malted Milk Speckled Chocolate Sugar Cookies

WHAT KIND OF CHOCOLATE SHOULD I USE?

For gourmet cookies, only the best ingredients will give you the texture, richness and depth of flavor we all crave. Trust me on this! For a rich and robust chocolate flavor, I recommend using only high-quality chocolate – the taste and quality will eally shine through!

Extra Dark & Bittersweet Chocolate: Guittard 63% Extra Dark Chocolate Baking Chips and Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Chips are my favorite.
Unsweetened Chocolate: Guittard and Ghirardelli 100% Unsweetened Chocolate Chips, or if you don’t mind chopping chocolate, Ghirardelli or Baker’s Unsweetened Baking Bars
Semi-Sweet Chocolate: Guittard and Ghirardelli Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
German Chocolate: Baker’s German Sweet Chocolate Bars
Milk Chocolate: Guittard and Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate Chips
White Chocolate: Guittard Mystic White Cholate Baking Wafers (true white chocolate flavor and melt perfectly) or Lindt Classic White Chocolate Bars or Ghirardelli White Chocolate Premium Baking Bar, Ghirardelli Classic White Premium Baking Chips
Cocoa Powder: Always use Dutch-processed premium unsweetened cocoa for brownies! Valrhona Pure Cocoa Powder, Rodelle Gourmet Baking Cocoa, Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa or Ghirardelli 100% unsweetened Ground Cocoa
Black Cocoa Powder: King Arthur Black Cocoa will give you an intense, dark colored and unsweetened chocolate flavor – use sparingly for the darkest chocolate cake, cookies and brownies (think “Oreo” dark)

Malted Milk Speckled Chocolate Sugar Cookies

FOR PERFECT COOKIES EVERY TIME, START WITH THE RIGHT INGREDIENTS:

For gourmet cookies, in addition to using premium chocolate and cocoa, only the best ingredients will give you the texture, richness and depth of flavor we all crave. Make sure to use fresh ingredients for the best results! I’ve made so many cakes, cookies and brownies through the years, and these are my recommendations:

Butter: Land O Lakes Unsalted Butter. Avoid generic/bargain brands of butter, which often contain water, which will strip your brownies of a perfect sheen on top – and we LOVE a cookie with the perfect sheen!
Flour: King Arthur All Purpose Unbleached Flour is my favorite (it contains more gluten than other brands). Pillsbury All Purpose is my back-up, but weighs differently – make sure to adjust as necessary. (For reference, King Arthur is 120g per cup, Pillsbury is 129g per cup.)
Granulated Sugar: Domino Pure Cane Sugar
Baking Powder: Make sure that you use “aluminum-free” baking powder to avoid a tinny flavor. Rumford is one of the oldest and trusted brands.
Salt: To avoid a tinny flavor, never use iodized salt in cookies, cakes or brownies. Morten Non-Iodized Table Salt is my preferred brand for cooking and baking. For sea salt flakes, I use Maldon Sea Salt Flakes.
Vanilla: Rodelle is my preferred brand for Pure Vanilla Extract, Vanilla Bean Paste are made with the highest-quality Bourbon vanilla beans from Madagascar.
Espresso Powder: King Arthur Espresso Powder is my favorite!
Other Extracts & Flavorings: Rodelle (rodellevanilla.com), Cooks (cooksvanilla.com) and Amoretti (amoretti.com) brands make my favorite extracts and emulsions. Keep in mind that extracts and emulsions have different strengths, so watch your measurements and use recommended amounts.

Malted Milk Speckled Chocolate Sugar Cookies

MALTED MILK SPECKLED CHOCOLATE SUGAR COOKIES

If you love malted milk robin eggs in the Spring (or Whoppers year around), you’re going to love Malted Milk Chocolate Sugar Cookies - rich in chocolate flavor and incredibly soft. Malted milk powder amplifies the flavor of chocolate (much like espresso powder), joins the sugar in tenderizing the cookies, and adds an added layer of flavor that takes classic chocolate sugar cookies from good to great! Topped with a beautiful robin’s egg blue royal icing and decorated with a vanilla & chocolate speckle, these are almost too pretty to eat!

Malted Milk Speckled Chocolate Sugar Cookies

INGREDIENTS:
MALTED MILK SUGAR COOKIES:
2 cups (250g) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (63g) unsweetened cocoa powder
¼ cup (31g) malted milk powder
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter (softened to room temperature)
4 ounces block cream cheese (softened to room temperature)
1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
1 large egg (room temperature)
1 Tablespoon pure vanilla extract
¼ cup semisweet chocolate, chopped finely

FROSTING: (for Bakery Frosting see SnowflakesandCoffeecakes.com)
EASY ROYAL ICING:
4 cups powdered sugar
3 Tablespoons Meringue Powder
1 Tablespoon corn syrup (Karo)
2 Tablespoons flavoring (I use clear vanilla)
8-10+ Tablespoons water (room temperature)
AmeriColor Robin’s Egg Blue Soft Gel Food Coloring (strongly recommended!
(or you can mix aqua, turquoise and green food coloring to create Robin’s Egg Blue)

FOR SPECKLE DECORATING:
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon chocolate extract
1 teaspoon baking cocoa powder

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT:

Cookie cutter(s)
Rolling pin (wooden Joseph Joseph Rolling Pin works the BEST for these cookies!)
Large baking sheets
Silicone Baking Mats or Parchment Paper
Piping Bags & Tips

HOW I MAKE THESE:

Set butter, cream cheese and egg out to warm to room temperature.
Sift the flour and cocoa powder together in a medium bowl, whisk in the malted milk powder, cornstarch, baking powder and salt; set aside.
In a large bowl using a hand-held mixer or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed until completely smooth and creamy (about 2 minutes). Add the sugar and beat on medium high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add in the egg and vanilla extract and beat on high speed for another minute. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed between additions.
Mix in the finely chopped semi-sweet chocolate. This cookie dough will be really soft and creamy!
Generously flour your work surface and rolling pin. Divide dough into half and place on top of a parchment paper sized for your baking pans. Roll each half to a ¼-inch thickness (you will need to re-flour your rolling pin periodically to keep the dough from sticking). The rolled-out dough can be any shape, as long as it is evenly 1/4-inch thick. We’re rolling the cookie dough out BEFORE chilling it, which isn’t typical for most sugar cookie recipes – but this is a great trick! The dough is so much easier to roll out before it’s chilled.
Stack the pieces, with parchment paper between the two and a single piece of parchment paper on top, onto a baking sheet and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to overnight. Chilling is mandatory for this cookie dough, so that the cookies will keep their shape when baked.
The next day, preheat oven to 350°. Line 2-3 large baking pans with parchment paper (I prefer parchment paper over silicone baking mats for these cookies).
Remove one of the chilled cookie dough pieces from the refrigerator. The dough will seem very hard, but it’s softer than it appears! Immediately cut into shapes with cookie cutters that have been dipped in flour. Place each cookie about 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets. Re-roll dough scraps until all the dough is shaped. Repeat with remaining cookie dough.
For 3-inch cookies, bake for 10 minutes – the cookies will still appear soft. Make sure you rotate the baking sheet halfway through bake time. If your cookie cutters are smaller than 3 inches, bake for about 9-10 minutes. If your cookie cutters are larger than 3 inches, bake for about 12-13 minutes. Every oven is a little bit different, so watch your first batch when baking and time accordingly. DO NOT OVERBAKE! The cookies don’t spread much when they’re baking, so they will stay around ¼-inch thick. These are thick sugar cookies! Be sure not to overbake these as they’ll lose their softness.
Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes. Transfer the parchment paper together with the cookies to a cooling rack to cool completely. Once completely cool, decorate with Bakery Frosting or Easy Royal Icing and sprinkles if desired. (Bakery Frosting may be easier for little ones…)
TO MAKE EASY ROYAL FROSTING: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, add the ½ cup room-temperature water and meringue powder and dissolve on low (do not use a whisk attachment) for a minute or two. Once dissolved and slightly frothy, add all the powdered sugar and begin to mix on low. Add the karo syrup as it all starts to come together. Turn your mixer up to medium-high speed and beat for 5 minutes or until stiff peaks form. BE SURE NOT TO OVERMIX! Once still peaks form, it’s enough. If you overmix, the icing can become crumble after it dries on your cookies.
ROBIN’S EGG BLUE: Add desired food coloring – I used AmeriColor Robin’s Egg Blue Gel Food Coloring (you can also create a beautiful shade of robin’s egg blue with other food coloring - use a few drops of turquoise, a few drops of aqua, and one drop of leaf green) and blend until evenly colored.
At this point, you will use the Royal Icing as a base – divide as appropriate and add additional water a little bit at a time so that you have the right consistency for outlining, detail and flooding.
For flood consistency (usually what you will use the most of) - the icing should drizzle down in a ribbon and smooth out within 10-15 seconds with the frosting in the bowl. If it's too thick, add a little more water (a teaspoon at a time). If it's too thin, add a little more sifted confectioners' sugar (a tablespoon or two at a time).
When you're not working directly with the Royal Icing (for example, you’ve split the icing into separate bowls and colored with a few drops of food coloring), place a damp paper towel directly on the surface of the Royal Icing. It will start crusting immediately when exposed to air, and by placing the damp towel directly on top it will prevent it from hardening.
FROST & DECORATE! Make sure that your cookies are completely cooled before starting.
Transfer icing to a piping bag fitted with a #2 round tip and pipe frosting on all cookies.
This Easy Royal Icing usually sets in about 2 hours at room temperature, depending on the temperature and humidity. If you're layering royal icing onto cookies for specific designs and need it to set quickly, place cookies in front of a fan heater (set on low heat), box fan or oscillating fan to help speed it up – you’ll need at least 1 hour between layers. Letting your decorated cookies dry in front of a fan will also increase the “sheen” or “shine” of the frosting, rather than a flat matte finish if dried slower only at room temperature.
Allow cookies to dry uncovered for at least 6-8 hours before next step.
SPECKLE COOKIES: To speckle, place the dried frosted cookies on a large sheet of parchment paper. Using your finger or a very small spoon, mix together the pure vanilla extract, chocolate extract and cocoa powder in a small bowl. It's best to have a glove handy so you don't dye your fingertip brown.
Dip a small paintbrush in the food coloring/water and flick the mixture onto the cookies using one of your fingertips. Rotate the direction of your finger to make sure you get all of the cookies evenly. Have fun with this - and try not to make a huge mess!
For best results, allow speckled frosting to set and dry 24-HOURS before storing – keep parchment paper between each layer.

YIELD: Makes about 27 (three-inch) cookies (or 20 4-inch cookies)

RECIPE NOTES:

COCOA POWDER: For this recipe you can use either Dutch-processed or natural cocoa powder. Dutch-processed cocoa powder is typically paired with baking powder, but either works for this cookie recipe. Always use the best quality baking cocoa for the best results!

MALTED MILK POWDER: For this recipe I recommend Nestle Carnation Malted Milk Powder. If you aren’t able to find malted milk powder, you can substitute a 5-ounce box of malted milk balls, crushed fine.

SIFTING : Sifting the flour and cocoa powder together is imperative to ensure the two are perfectly blended and aerated, and eliminates any lumps!
SOFT & CHEWY COOKIES: These cookies will stay fresh in an air-tight container at room temperature for up to 3 days or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.
FOR THE BEST CHOCOLATE SUGAR COOKIES: I recommend sprinkling cocoa powder on your work surface and rolling pin for rolling out the cookie dough, rather than flour. You may also find it helpful to dip your cookie cutters in cocoa powder between cutting cookies out. Cocoa powder added extra chocolate flavor and chocolate color to these cookies (regular flour may make your cookies bake up with a white surface).
MAKE AHEAD TIP: Plain baked chocolate sugar cookies freeze well up to 1 month. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator before decorating.
TO KEEP THESE COOKIES SOFT: These cookies will stay soft and fresh in an air-tight container at room temperature for up to one week. You can also pop some large fresh marshmallows in the container to keep the cookies soft – replace every day or so, as soon as the marshmallows dry out and harden. It’s a sweet little trick!
MAKE AHEAD TIP: Plain baked cookies freeze well up to 1 month. Thaw overnight UNOPENED on your kitchen countertop before decorating.
FOR PARTIES: I package cookies individually in self-sealing clear cellophane cello bags (Pack It Chic are my favorite brand). Make sure cookies are completely dry after decorating before packaging. To make ahead, place individually wrapped and sealed cookies in a larger airtight container and freeze. Thaw on your countertop before serving - do not thaw in refrigerator (you are trying to minimize moisture during defrosting, which can cause your frosting designs to run or bleed).

Original recipe created by Snowflakes & Coffeecakes; published April 2022..

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