I made these cookies to test primarily one thing, and that was how toasted milk powder would taste in a cookie dough. I stumbled upon the concept of toasted milk powder when I was watching a video about a chocolatier in Miami who incorporated that into her milk chocolate. She claimed that it gave her chocolate a much deeper flavor profile, and I fully believe that. I have worked with milk powder in the past before, but never have I thought about trying to toast it before using it in anything. And it was a wonderful idea, because it made my cookies go from good to great! Usually for my brown butter cookies, I would use non-fat milk powder to stabilize the brown butter.

Brown butter is made by heating up regular butter until it basically becomes an amber colored liquid that has these rich, butterscotch candy-like notes from the milk solids burning off. It is delicious, but on its own, brown butter lacks the stability from losing its own milk solids to be whippable. In my cookies, I love whipping the butter to incorporate air into the cookies, as that gives them a much more pleasant mouthfeel. And in the case of brown butter, adding in the milk powder makes it just as whippable as normal butter, and when using toasted milk powder, you get an even more intense nuttiness from dulce de leche-like notes meeting butterscotch toffee-like notes. It’s a huge win-win, basically.

Now the for the funniest part of all – the entire time I have been baking, I did not realize how big my cookies actually were. I always used this green-handled ice cream scoop since high school for things like cupcakes and cookies, but it was not until I purchased a much smaller purple handled scoop and scooped cookies using both when I realized just how large my cookies actually were: the purple scoop cookies were a little larger than a Ritz Cracker, whereas the green scoop cookies spread out to being bigger than my entire face. And the craziest thing for me is that I used to make cookie sandwiches with two of the green scoop cookies all the time, and it never occurred to me that I was making them with these gigantic cookies this entire time! That being said, you can either make 48 regular-sized cookies, or 12 gigantic ones with this recipe.

Makes 12 giant cookies:
For the toasted milk powder:
1/2 cup non-fat milk powder

Spread on a lined sheet tray and roast at 350 degrees F for 10 minutes.

1/2 cup toasted milk powder
2 sticks unsalted butter, browned
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 tspn vanilla extract
1 tspn baking soda
1 tspn baking powder
A pinch of salt
1 cup dark chocolate chips
2 cups all-purpose flour

Start by whipping the milk powder, butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and baking soda and powders together until tripled in volume. Fold into that the chocolate then the flour. Chill the dough for at least 10 minutes so that it will be easier to scoop. Scoop out either 12 giant cookies or 48 regular cookies, spacing them on a lined sheet tray at least 2 inches apart. Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes(for a gooey cookie) or 20 minutes(for a crispy cookie).