The 1-Ingredient Upgrade for Better Chocolate Chip Cookies (Works Every Time)

My freezer is always stocked with chocolate chip cookie dough—they’re the ultimate anytime treat. There are thousands if not millions of chocolate chip cookie recipes out there. So it’s highly likely you already met your perfect match, whether you like them soft, chewy, crispy, or somewhere in between.

I’m not here to convince you to try a different chocolate chip cookie recipe—I wholeheartedly support your choice! I’m here to share with you a pro tip that can improve any chocolate chip cookie recipe: Add milk powder.

What Is Milk Powder?

Milk powder is a dry dairy product made by evaporating milk until it turns into a powder. It’s a concentration of milk solids and the benefits are similar to using brown butter—the milk solids toast, get nutty, and delicious—only easier. You simply add the milk powder to the dough.

Adding milk powder to your cookie dough enhances the caramel notes and gives the cookies a distinctive chew and creamy quality. It gives the chocolate chip cookies a depth of flavor and a wonderful toasty quality.

One of the benefits of milk powder, unlike regular milk or butter, is that it has a very long shelf life and doesn’t require being refrigerated. It’ll keep in your pantry for up to 18 months after being opened—if it lasts you that long since you’ll be wanting to make cookies all the time.

Milk powder is sometimes labeled as dehydrated milk or nonfat dry milk powder. I use Nestle Carnation Instant Nonfat Dry Milk, but whatever you can get your hands on will do the trick. If you can’t locate milk powder, you can use malted milk powder (dried barley, evaporated milk, and wheat flour), although it has a stronger flavor overall so you should use a little less.

How To Use Milk Powder In Your Chocolate Chip Cookies

You can use milk powder in any chocolate chip cookie recipe. It does not require you to alter the other ingredients in any way—simply add one to four tablespoons, depending on how much flavor you’d like. There are two options:

1. Add milk powder to the dry ingredients: It will blend right in with the flour, salt, and leaveners, and disperse evenly in the dough. 

2. Brown the butter with milk powder: Just when you thought it couldn’t get better than brown butter, it can with milk powder. If you’re using a chocolate chip cookie recipe that calls for browning the butter, add the milk powder to it. It’ll caramelize along with the milk solids in the butter. The deeper the color, the more caramelized flavor you’ll get. For recipes that call for melting the butter, mix the milk powder into the melted butter.

Milk powder will give your cookies a rich, toasty quality that’s hard to replicate any other way. And soon you’ll be baking with it all the time.

Your Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes