Malted milk chocolate cookies (make a mighty ice cream sandwich)

I want to talk to you about a very delicious ice cream sandwich I made recently.  The ice cream is anchored by two thin malted milk chocolate cookies.  The fresh cookies themselves are slightly crisp and caramelized around the edges but soft and chewy in the center.  They sound delicious on their own but I confess that it was the idea of the ice cream sandwich that drew me in.  Happily, they turned out even better than I envisioned.

If you like to read cookbooks and visit food sites and blogs like I do, you'll have heard about using malt powder in baked goods.  The smell of malted milk powder vaguely reminds me of childhood - of Ovaltine, Horlicks type drinks.  I don't know how I re-stumbled upon this recipe for malted milk chocolate cookies from The Pioneer Woman but this last time really peaked my interest.  I'm sure you know The Pioneer Woman...I love her show and she strikes me as a woman with good taste but I've never tried one of her recipes until now.

And this idea of malt, milk chocolate, and ice cream wouldn't leave my brain.  It just sounded like a great match, like a milk shake from the old soda shops.  I kept thinking my husband would love it.  But I had some reservations; I wasn't sure I could trust a thin cookie to be soft and chewy, the way my family and I like it.  I don't think I'd ever made a truly thin chocolate chip cookie before and it didn't sound like there would be a whole lot of room for error.  But I really like the idea of thin cookies for an ice cream sandwich.  Before making them, I predictably considered using semisweet instead of milk chocolate, wondering if these cookies would be too sweet.  In the end, I used a little less sugar but stuck with milk chocolate because I wanted to trust the recipe and because milk chocolate, malt, and ice cream just sound right together.

You have to keep a watchful eye on these cookies to make sure they don't over-bake and go beyond soft and chewy to crisp.  On the other hand, if you like crisp cookies, all you need to do is bake them a few extra minutes.  They came out a bit greasy straight from the oven (that could've been my doing - maybe the butter was a bit too warm) but otherwise, the texture was spot on and the flavor delicious.  Just so you know, the malt flavor is subtle.  It's more a lingering hint of something rather than a distinct malt flavor and I'm okay with that.

I'm no ice cream sandwich expert but these are some mighty good ice cream sandwiches!  The cookies are soft and easy to eat even frozen and they're the perfect thinness to share the limelight with the ice cream.  I made both coffee and vanilla ice cream sandwiches with these cookies.  Both were terrific but I have to say that we really adored the coffee ice cream combination here (and I'm generally not a coffee ice cream person unlike the little guy).  My husband did indeed love this ice cream sandwich; we all did, and this is definitely something I'll be making again.