fine eats: TWD-Chocolate Whopper Malted Drops

Earlier tonight, I was dropping the mounds onto the half sheets and tasting some batter as I went along. It was definitely sweet, chocolately, and not too bad at all. (I should probably state that tasting most dough or batter is standard. It always reminds me of baking in my mom's kitchen as a child where she never let me taste cake or cookie dough, cause you know children, along with the elderly are at a higher risk for Salmonella poisoning. I love my mumma. A lot.) Now that I've taken the last sheet out of the oven and the cookies are cooling on the racks, I'm not sure how crazy I am about these malted drops. This makes me sad, as you can imagine, because I love cookies (and sweets in general, um, make that food in general) and I was really looking forward to a new and interesting treat to add to my recipe arsenal. Okay, maybe arsenal is a little too scary a term to be used in reference to a group of recipes, but you get my point.

I followed the recipe (page 85 in Baking ) pretty closely using regular malted milk powder and chopped bittersweet chocolate, but at the market I go to they didn't have Whoppers. This was certainly not a problem as they did have large, espresso-flavored, malted milk balls in the bulk candy case-and we all know how great coffee and chocolate are together, sort of like "...lamb and tuna fish. What, you like spaghetti and meatball better? Is that better analogy for you?" (If anyone can guess the movie I'll give you a shiny nickel.) As I mentioned above, the batter was tasty and I thought the flavors were rich, but came together well. I'll give them another taste once they cool, as I figure after all we've been through (30 minutes in the kitchen) I owe these drop cookies at least a second shot. I bet they'd be good with milk, but since I don't drink milk and haven't in about 7 years I can't really tell you. Maybe when E gets home from poker he'll let me know.

In fairness to the cookies, maybe I'm just in a foul mood because the battery in the camera was dead and I tried to charge it quickly and take some pictures, but it kept dying on me and it kept taking bad pictures. Okay, maybe the bad pictures were not 100% the camera's fault, (I'd say 95% camera, plus or minus a few basis points), but the battery dying was. In addition to the three posted, there were lots of other photos taken, however they looked pyschedelic-a crazy blend of batter, chocolate and malt balls. Please try to vividly imagine a pyschedelic pattern that uses only shades of brown. Very cool. Oh wait, not cool at all.