My choice for this week comes from a leftover ingredient
from a previous week – malt powder! It
wasn’t an intentional choice, but I bought a big jar of it for the Chocolate MaltCake, and still have a lot left. And
although you wouldn’t think so, these cornflake cookies contain malt powder(as
well as chocolate)! I can’t think of
many other recipes that will help me use it up… I also wanted quite a simple
recipe. The last time I made cookies, I
overcooked them a little, so my aim this time was for a soft cookie, but with a
little bit of a crunch from the cornflakes.
The Bake
First of all, my amendment to the recipe is halving the
quantities. It wanted 400 grams of flour
for the cookie dough, but I only had 300 grams.
The recipe consists of two main parts – preparing the cornflake mixture,
making the cookie dough, then merging them for the final cookie mix. You might think that you could just add
cornflakes straight to the mixture. But
you’d be wrong. You actually mix
cornflakes with malt powder, caster sugar and salt, then coat in melted butter,
and bake the mixture for 15 minutes, or until the mixture is ‘crispy’. My end
product, however, looked a bit like a giant Anzac biscuit. Once it cooled I prised it from the glass
tray but it still wasn’t crispy, more gooey.
While the cornflakes were baking, I made the cookie dough,
which is a standard cookie dough mix, with chocolate chips added. It was all very simple. I then added the cornflake mixture to
it. The recipe said to use two
tablespoons of dough for each cookie, but for the first batch I used an ice
cream scoop. As a result I only had 5
cookies on a tray when I put them in the oven for 15 minutes.
As you can see, the cookies are quite big! So they weren’t adequately cooked after 15
minutes. I wanted them soft, but not
raw! So back in they went for 5 more
minutes. For the second batch I used a
dessert spoon, to get smaller cookies which would cook faster! (I was running
late for badminton…) These turned out
more like what I had in my head.
The cookies are really soft, even when cooled, and still so
a few days later. The chocolate cookie
element tasted really good, and the chocolate chips had melted a little, giving
a smooth, rich flavour, but the cornflake detracted from the taste more than
anything. As the cornflakes weren’t
crispy, there wasn’t a texture contrast, and there wasn’t a distinctive taste,
so it had no real purpose! So although
the cookies disappeared quite quickly, I think next time I’ll just make
chocolate chip cookies. I’ll have to
find some other recipes using malt powder!
I have a week off next week, so hopefully that will lend
itself to an interesting, complex and time consuming bake. Until then, happy baking!
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