I've never liked the flavor of malt. I think whoppers are a waste of chocolate and I can't fathom why anyone would enjoy a malted milkshake. So when I saw these milk chocolate malted brownies on the schedule for Baked Sunday Mornings, I seriously considered going rogue instead of baking along with everyone else. But... baking the same thing everyone else is making is part of the fun. Part of the point is to try recipes I'd never try on my own, right? And as Dani got me to admit, it's been such a long time since I even tried something malted, maybe my tastes have changed.
So, I scouted the local grocery stores for malted milk powder, being reluctant to buy a whole pound from King Arthur Flour. After several failures, Shoprite and Carnation came through for me. These brownies from Baked Occasions have several things going on - milk chocolate, malt powder, a ganache topping, and a royal icing decoration - but they are quite simple to make and assemble, especially if you skip the royal icing (I am not a huge fan of icing on my brownies, unless we're talking about mint icing. Then I'm all in.) I decided to make these for the Thanksgiving-favorites dinner party Caleb and I threw in mid-October. I made them that afternoon, before I started truly stressing out about all the dishes I'd planned that would be competing for oven time. I need about three ovens when I have big dinner parties. Maybe someday we'll have a huge house and that will be possible, but for now I appreciate my guests' ability to bear with my single-oven handicap.
I served three desserts at our dinner party (because I worried about these brownies): a lemon yogurt bundt cake, double chocolate buckwheat cookies, and these chocolate malted brownies. The lemon yogurt cake and the cookies were devoured, but these brownies were barely touched (see photo below for proof). And I know my guests like chocolate. Some of them even professed to like malt. To me, that indicates this recipe wasn't much of a winner.
There are several defenses I can offer for these chocolate malted brownies. They are incredibly rich and fudgy, so a small square goes a long way. This recipe made about 54 squares and I only had 19 people over. That could explain why so many brownie squares remained - that and the fact that we served cheesy mashed potatoes, two kinds of stuffing, gravy, rolls, roasted Brussels sprouts, and roasted chicken.
In the end, my tastes haven't changed. I still don't like malt as a flavor. However they weren't bad at all when eaten from frozen, because I couldn't really taste the malt. Caleb wanted to know where the malted chocolate flavor was (he only tried them frozen), because he couldn't really taste it and was expecting malted chocolate. I guess that makes my frozen brownie approach a bit of a miss for anyone who wants malted chocolate. I suppose to appeal to diverse tastes, you could keep half the brownies in the freezer until serving and leave the other half out.
Head over the Baked Sunday Mornings for the recipe and to see what the other bakers thought of these.
