For The Most Flavorful Boxed Brownies You've Tasted, Add This Powder To The Bowl (It's Magic)

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The way to my husband's heart is often through his tummy, and what his tummy loves is decadent homemade brownies. For over a decade now, I've baked that wonderful man these sweet treats, usually from scratch. When authoring my third cookbook, "108 Asian Cookies," I had to test a few different brownie recipes. But even a cookbook author cheats from time to time and makes boxed brownies, especially when pressed for time. However, I make sure to make these brownies taste richer and more flavorful by adding a magical ingredient: milk powder.

For those who are unfamiliar with this ingredient, milk powder (aka powdered milk) is a shelf-stable dairy product made from evaporated, pasteurized milk. It has all of the flavors of milk, but none of the liquid, so it doesn't add moisture to your baked goodies. When adding milk powder to your dough or batter, it won't turn them goopy, runny, or too thin. 

You can also mix milk powder with water to hydrate it and turn it back into liquid milk. Milk powder is the perfect ingredient for baking, especially when you are using boxed mixes.

Aside from adding richness and making boxed brownies more flavorful, milk powder helps enhance the texture of baked goodies. While all the water has evaporated from the milk, the powder retains milk's fats and creams, which help baked goodies stay tender and soft.

Then, there's also the protein in milk powder. Like the protein found in wheat flour, milk proteins help strengthen the gluten network in your brownies, cakes, and bread. The result is baked goodies that rise beautifully, rather than staying dense or tough post-baking. Finally, the concentrated milk sugars, or lactose, in milk powder will help your baked goodies brown beautifully thanks to the Maillard reaction. This was definitely something I noticed when incorporating milk powder in many of my Asian cookie and cake recipes in my baking cookbooks.

Now, if you're still wondering how to incorporate milk powder when making boxed brownies, don't worry, I got you. Simply mix milk powder in with the dry ingredients from the box. Use a whisk or a rubber spatula and give the dry ingredients a good, thorough mix. If you've run out of cream or milk, you can also rehydrate the milk powder and use that as milk for baking. For all these reasons, you should definitely consider keeping milk powder in your pantry. You may even want to try making your own milk powder at home with just two ingredients.