- 3 weeks ago
Pastry chef Caroline Schiff shares her ultimate chocolate chip cookie recipe using two special ingredients. Discover how brown butter and malted milk powder create irresistibly chewy centers, crisp edges, and deep toffee-like flavor for the perfect cookie.
For more recipes like this one, preorder Caroline’s cookbook Daily Dessert, out 10/13/26: https://www.pastryschiff.com/cookbook/
For more recipes like this one, preorder Caroline’s cookbook Daily Dessert, out 10/13/26: https://www.pastryschiff.com/cookbook/
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Listen, between you and me, there are two things that are gonna make the perfect chocolate
00:05chip cookie, malted milk powder and brown butter.
00:08These two ingredients are going to take your cookies to the next level.
00:13My ideal chocolate chip cookie, when I bite into it, I want a little crispiness around
00:18the edges, I want it chewy in the middle, more chocolate chips than is normal, sea salt
00:25on top.
00:26I'm asking a lot of a chocolate chip cookie, but I'm gonna show you how to do it.
00:29I'm Caroline Schiff, and today I'm gonna show you how to make the perfect chocolate chip
00:35cookie.
00:39First thing we're gonna do is brown the butter.
00:42This is unsalted butter.
00:44When you're browning butter, essentially what's happening is you are separating the milk solids
00:49out of the butter and starting to caramelize them.
00:54That's the part that's getting ground.
00:55You just wanna get it in a pan over medium-high heat.
00:59Your butter's gonna melt.
01:00It's gonna bubble away.
01:02And then you're gonna start to see it caramelize on the bottom of the pan.
01:05Browning butter for this recipe is really crucial.
01:08It adds nuttiness, kind of caramelliness, toffee flavors.
01:13It's gonna just give you a exceptionally delicious cookie.
01:18So once I see those milk solids start to caramelize, I'm gonna really start to whisk it up.
01:24I want them incorporated into the brown butter, because that's where all the flavor is.
01:29Once the caramelization starts, it's gonna happen pretty quickly, so you don't wanna walk
01:33away from this, and the whole process should take maybe five minutes.
01:37The smell is unbelievable.
01:40I want everything in my life to smell like brown butter.
01:43I wanna smell like brown butter.
01:45The butter's got this beautiful sort of honey hue now.
01:48All right.
01:49I think we're good.
01:50Here's our beautiful brown butter.
01:52We're gonna let it cool down, and then we'll make our dough.
01:58We're gonna start with the dry ingredients.
02:00The most important of all, malted milk powder.
02:04So what is malted milk powder?
02:06Malted milk powder is a combination of dry evaporated milk, malted barley, and wheat.
02:13This ingredient right here is why everything at a diner tastes so delicious.
02:17Malted milkshakes, pancakes, waffles, it's toasty, it's nutty.
02:23I like to think that it's like a je ne sais quoi.
02:25It's just like, hmm, what's that?
02:27Let's talk about the flours that we're using.
02:30We're using two kinds.
02:31First, all-purpose flour.
02:33It's all-purpose.
02:34You can use it for most things, but we're gonna add some bread flour.
02:38It's got a higher gluten content.
02:40What does that do?
02:41It adds to the chewiness.
02:43We're gonna add the salt.
02:44People just aren't salting their baked goods enough.
02:47I will die on this hill.
02:48We salt savory food, and we should be salting our sweets as well.
02:52Baking soda, and finally, the star of the show, our gorgeous nutty toasty melted milk powder.
02:59You probably noticed no baking powder in here, just baking soda.
03:04Baking powder makes for a cakey cookie.
03:07I do not like cakey cookies, and I don't think you should like them either.
03:11You just want to whisk it, make sure you break up those lumps, and that's it.
03:16Okay, dry ingredients.
03:17Done.
03:18Let's talk chocolate.
03:19I am using milk chocolate chips.
03:22The milk chocolate in my mind really complements the malted milk powder, complements that savoriness
03:29that it has, and that nutty quality with all the sweetness that's in here.
03:33It's a beautiful balance.
03:34These are Guitard milk chocolate chips.
03:38They're really easy to find in a lot of recipes.
03:41It'll say, use the highest quality chocolate you can find.
03:44That is great, but regular supermarket chocolate chips are great.
03:48You'll notice these are really nice big chips.
03:52Go big or go home.
03:53I like how these are going to distribute.
03:55They're just really satisfying.
03:57You get like really nice big pockets of chocolate.
04:00So a lot of people will add the chocolate chips to the final dough.
04:04I just toss them right in with the dry, just kind of get all that stuff together.
04:08Dry ingredients, done.
04:10Let's move on to the wet.
04:11So we're going to start with our brown butter.
04:13You want to make sure you get in all of those glorious little caramelized nutty bits.
04:20So we've got two types of sugar.
04:22We have dark brown sugar.
04:24So dark brown sugar has moisture in it.
04:27It's got molasses, more depth of flavor.
04:29And this helps with making the cookie chewy, which we want.
04:34We love.
04:34We love a chewy cookie.
04:35And then we have regular old granulated sugar.
04:39Granulated sugar does not have moisture content.
04:42And this will also help with those crispy edges.
04:45We're going to add eggs.
04:46A lot of recipes will say that you need to use room temperature eggs, which is great, lovely.
04:53But I have made this recipe so many times.
04:55And I've made it with eggs that are brought up to room temp.
04:59And I've made it with eggs that are right out of the fridge.
05:01And you know what?
05:02Don't worry about your eggs.
05:03So crack your eggs into a separate small bowl first so you don't get any shells.
05:10And then we're going to add them.
05:12Oh, I just saw a giant shell.
05:15Don't do that.
05:17It's so embarrassing.
05:18We're going to add pure vanilla extract.
05:21I love pure vanilla extract.
05:23It has beautiful fragrance and complexity to it.
05:27If you only have imitation vanilla extract, it's totally fine.
05:31And you can use it and your cookies will be delicious.
05:34I'm going to whisk this up.
05:35I like to whisk it for like two to three minutes.
05:38You want to make sure you break up all those lumps of brown sugar.
05:42It's just getting light and thick and pale.
05:45And this ensures that your butter is fully incorporated.
05:51Look at that.
05:52Beautiful ribbons, buttery, sugary ribbons.
05:55And it smells incredible.
05:57Look how gorgeous this is.
05:59Nice and opaque, light.
06:01We're good to go.
06:02Okay, we have our beautiful emulsification of brown butter and sugars and eggs.
06:07And we're going to add our dry ingredients.
06:10You can just dump it in all at once.
06:12I like to use a spatula.
06:13You just want to work this together until there's no dry patches and it's totally uniform.
06:19Because we were using the butter when it was still melted.
06:23This is a really easy cookie dough to bring together.
06:27Look at that.
06:28I just want to eat this.
06:29If you weren't watching, I would.
06:31So this next step is super important.
06:34We are going to cover our dough and chill it for at least five hours.
06:39This is going to help the flavors develop.
06:41It's going to harden up the butter a little bit so we can scoop it.
06:45They won't spread too, too much in the oven.
06:47Chilling it overnight is ideal.
06:50I think that's going to give you the very best results.
06:53But five hours will get you there.
06:55So we're going to chill this and then we can scoop the cookies and bake them off.
07:03So this is a cookie scoop.
07:05And I highly recommend getting one because it'll make your cookies super evenly portioned.
07:11It's about a two ounce scoop and I am going to line them up on parchment lined sheet trays.
07:18And for these cookies, all you need is parchment paper.
07:20They have plenty of butter in them so they're not going to stick to anything.
07:23And these are going to be nice big cookies.
07:27I'm going to do five cookies per tray spaced nicely apart so they don't spread and run into each other.
07:36Yeah, we got enough for one more cookie.
07:38No cookie dough left behind.
07:41We're going to top each cookie with more chocolate.
07:44We want those beautiful kind of puddles of chocolate on top of the cookies,
07:49as well as all that chocolate inside.
07:51So I just kind of mush a few chips on top of each.
07:56And you don't want to press the cookie down and flatten it because it's already going to spread
08:01a good amount in the oven.
08:03You just want to press down enough so that the chips kind of stick on top.
08:07You could just eat these balls of cookie dough, too.
08:10I mean, I'm not like endorsing that you do that, but I'm not going to like stop you.
08:16Nobody's going to stop you.
08:18Use up all these extra chips.
08:20A lot of recipes.
08:21I just feel like there's not enough chocolate chips.
08:24It's chocolate chip cookie, people.
08:26Stop messing around.
08:28Last very important thing.
08:29I've said it before.
08:31I'll say it again.
08:32Nobody is salting their baked goods enough.
08:34We're going to top each one of these with some flaky sea salt.
08:38It's just going to make everything pop and give that little bit of savoriness that we want.
08:43So a nice pinch on top of each.
08:45So my oven is set to 350 with racks in the middle and our cookies are ready to bake.
08:53So these cookies are going to bake for 16 to 20 minutes.
08:57They're going to be nice and golden brown around the edges, but still look kind of nice and soft in
09:02the middle.
09:04Gorgeous.
09:06They smell amazing.
09:08That malt, that nuttiness.
09:10You can see it's like crispy edge, but I can feel the center is just nice and soft.
09:18Oh, it's exactly what I want.
09:20I always let my cookies cool right on the trays.
09:22I don't even bother with a rack.
09:24I've done it both ways and this works and is less fussy.
09:27So just leave them.
09:28You can enjoy them warm or let them fully cool.
09:32But warm is like, I am going to just make a stack of cookies.
09:36It's so satisfying.
09:38I love doing it.
09:40Oof, they're still a little warm.
09:41Let's do it.
09:42Oh my God.
09:43Like, look at this.
09:44I mean, imagine just walking into your kitchen and seeing this stack of cookies.
09:51They look so perfect.
09:53I'm ready to eat one now.
09:58It's so perfect.
09:59It's almost like toffee on the inside.
10:02But I get like a beautiful crunch around the edges and the malt powder.
10:05It's a little savory.
10:07It's nutty.
10:08It's caramelly.
10:09These cookies are like over the top.
10:11This is like a warm hug.
10:13This is like the most perfect nostalgic specimen of a cookie.
10:18I'm so happy.
10:19This is an extraordinary cookie, but it wasn't that hard.
10:22It was two special secret ingredients.
10:26The malted milk powder, the brown butter, and a couple simple techniques.
10:30It just makes these cookies exceptional.
10:33These exceptional cookies, along with so much more, is in my book, Daily Dessert.
10:39I encourage you to get your malted milk powder, brown your butter, and make these cookies.
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