These chocolate malt shortbread cookies are rich and buttery like a good shortbread should be, but with added malted milk powder and chopped chocolate to evoke your favorite soda shop classic in cookie form.
What are chocolate malt shortbread cookies? Well to answer that you have to know what is a chocolate malt. Or really what’s a malt? Many people may be familiar with the term from ice cream shops or candy. A malt is similar to a milkshake, but much thicker. If you have ever enjoyed whoppers or chocolate malt balls, a malted milkshake has a similar flavor.
Malted milk powder is sprouted barley and wheat, dried and ground with evaporated milk. It mostly adds a sweet, nutty, caramel-like taste. However, the barley almost adds some savory umami as well but not in an overpowering way. You can add it to tons of things but ice cream is one of the most popular. I have used it before in my Chocolate Malt Milk Buns and my Fun Rainbow Malted Milk Blondies.
A good chocolate malt is one of life’s greatest dessert pleasures. At least for me. Surprisingly, they are actually made with vanilla and not chocolate ice cream. Maybe not universally, but all the ones I have had (and love) are. It’s vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup, milk and malted milk powder. So when I made these chocolate malt shortbread cookies I took the same approach. It’s a vanilla malted cookie, with chopped chocolate bar.
Baking Tips
Because malted milk powder will feel powdery like flour, you might think you want to replace some of the flour with it but actually it behaves like a sugar. So it may feel like there is slightly too much flour in these when you’re shaping the dough but I promise there is not. When they bake, the malt powder is going to melt like sugar would and will help bring the texture of the cookie together. These chocolate malt shortbread DO spread a bit more than a traditional shortbread because of it. They also will have a slightly different consistency but they ARE shortbread.
Shortbread cookies can be cooked for a range of time and it will change their structure a little bit. If you want crisper cookies, bake them on the longer side of the bake time, for softer ones, you want to take them out earlier.
Make sure to chop your chocolate somewhat finely. Large chunks of chocolate will make slicing through the cold cookie dough more difficult and may lead to misshapen or uneven cookies. Some people like to roll out shortbread instead of cutting and slicing and if you want larger chunks you could do that with this recipe, however I have never done it myself.
Chocolate Malt Shortbread Cookies Key Ingredients
- Malted Milk Powder – Malted milk powder should not be confused with powdered milk. While they both may have powdered milk, malted milk powder has other ingredients like barley in it. King Arthur and Carnation both are great options.
- Chocolate Bar – I tested this recipe with both semi-sweet and milk chocolate. Either works great, and have made it with both multiple times. If you enjoy dark chocolate, that also could be used. Whatever your favorite is, use that but as always, higher quality chocolate will always perform and taste better.
- Butter – As with ANY shortbread cookie, butter is kind of the star of the show! Even though these are chocolate malt shortbread, the butter flavor is still important and present. When making shortbread (or scones) I always splurge for good butter with a higher butterfat percentage.
Ingredients
- 113 g Unsalted butter ½ cup, room temperature
- 60 g Powdered sugar ½ cup, sifted
- ½ tsp Sea salt
- ½ tsp Vanilla
- 28 g Malted milk powder 4 tbsp
- 125 g AP Flour 1 cup
- 60 g Chopped milk chocolate
Instructions
- Have a sheet of parchment or plastic wrap about 12×12 laid out on your counter.
- In a medium bowl and hand mixer or the bowl of your stand mixer with paddle attached, beat your butter and powdered sugar together until creamy and smooth.
- Add in your salt, vanilla and malted milk powder and mix thoroughly.
- Add in your flour. If using a mixer, mix on low until flour is incorporated and crumbly.
- Add your chopped chocolate and mix into the dough with a rubber spatula until evenly dispersed. The dough will still look pretty crumbly but if you press it together it should stick.
- Using your hands, push the dough together with your hands until it becomes a a large ball or mass. Move the dough to your parchment or plastic wrap.
- Shape the dough into a log shape (round or square). There are no hard and fast rules on what size it needs to be but I generally end up with something about 6 inches long and 2 inches wide on both the other sides. Wrap in your plastic wrap or parchment after shaping.
- Place your cookie dough into the refrigerator for about 1 hour, but up to 24 hours is fine.
- Preheat your oven to 350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment.
- After your dough has chilled at least one hour, remove it from the refrigerator and wrapping then slice into slices that are about ¼" thick.
- Place your slices onto your cookie sheet giving them about 2-2½ inches space and place directly into the oven.
- Bake your cookies for 10-12 minutes. For softer cookies right around the 10 minute mark the cookies should be set and ready to come out. If you want crisper cookies, wait a few more minutes until the edges have started to brown.
- After the cookies have come out of the oven, I often use my spatula to fix any uneven spreading and reshape the cookies. Let sit on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling tray.
- Store cookies in an airtight container for up to a week. Enjoy!
hi does the butter need to be room temp?
Hi Jackie, sorry about that it should be noted in the recipe (I just fixed that), but yes. You probably could make cold butter work but it would be much more difficult.
Thank you for your reply! I ended up using softened butter. I hate to say it but I really really struggled with these. I used grams and the dough came together beautifully. where I got confused is you say to get a 12×12 parchment or plastic wrap but not what size to roll the log so I assumed it needed to be a 12″ long log so that’s what I did. then I used a ruler to measure the cookies. I got around 39 cookies at 1/4″ thick. then came the bake time. I used an aluminum sheet pan and parchment. cookies burned at 12 minutes but. were alright at 10 minutes after turning the tray once. still crispy but ok. the last of them I cut thicker and those burned at 10 minutes. the flavors was interesting even crispy kinda reminded me of cheezits for some reason. the texture didn’t remind me of shortbread at all it didn’t melt in your mouth even when baked less time and softer. I used a stand mixer and weighed everything in grams. used gold medal flour and carnation malted milk powder and kerrygold unsalted butter and organic powdered sugar. there’s no recipe like this out there so I’d really like to know where I went wrong. how long and wide should the log be rolled? did I do something wrong? I’m happy to answer any and all questions to figure this out I’d really love to make the correctly. thank you again I can’t wait to try other recipes by you and I don’t mean any of this rudely I’m sure I went wrong somehow even as an experienced baker I make mistakes. thank you
Hi Jackie, I’m going to re-test this recipe today as it’s been a while since I’ve baked it. I always want to triple check that I haven’t made any mistakes as well because I’m definitely human and make them! I’m also going to email you at the email listed in your response to hopefully help you troubleshoot this further as it will probably be a little easier that way 🙂