When making brownies, Lani Halliday, pastry chef and owner of Brutus Bakeshop, says milk powder is a little bit about texture, but mostly about flavor. While you could just add a tablespoon of milk powder to the dry ingredients, she likes to take things a step further by making brown butter milk powder.
In this episode of Epi’s Ingredient Swap, Halliday instructs us to stir a cup of milk powder into brown butter and strain the mixture to separate the solids from the liquid. The liquid portion gets mixed in with melted chocolate, then both the solids and liquid chocolate-butter mixture get added to the brownie batter. While liquid milk is mostly water, “milk powder is all protein,” says Halliday. “You want to caramelize the protein solids to get a toasty nuttiness. When you use butter solids plus milk powder solids, you’re concentrating the flavor even more.”
In this application, milk powder is a highly concentrated flavor addition, similar to blitzing dehydrated fruit and adding it to a dessert. Given that, her next answer isn’t that shocking. When I asked Halliday about the best kind of milk powder to use in brownies, she had one thing to say: Full-fat forever.
Hot tip: To make your milk powder even more flavorful, give it a little toast.
Milk powder also works wonders in doughnuts and other fried doughs. “Milk powder gives gulab jamun dough an incredible rich creaminess, which, when fried, turns into a super soft dough, not dissimilar to brioche,” says Meera Sodha, author of East: 120 Vegetarian and Vegan recipes from Bangalore to Beijing and Fresh India.
In India, gulab jamuns are often made using khoya—thick concentrated milk solids made by reducing milk down over a slow heat. “Khoya isn’t widely available anywhere else,” Sodha explains, “so milk powder has become a time-saving ingredient for Indian cooks and a khoya substitute for the wider Indian diaspora.”
Her recipe calls for more than a cup of full-fat milk powder, which helps to create perfectly spongy treats that are burnished and bronzed on the outside and white and cakey within. “You couldn’t use liquid milk because you need the dry texture to be able to form the dough,” says Sodha. So milk powder is not just a nice option for making gulab jamun, but a necessary ingredient. Which is one more reason to follow Sodha’s lead and always keep a stash of the powder on hand—the same way you do with flour, butter, sugar, and eggs.
Kate Naturals Whole Dry Milk Powder
