I was wondering iffen I was gonna get any bites
I really wanted to know if it was an old-fashioned thing or a regional thing, yanno?*
It doesn't produce a malt taste, per se. Adding the malted milk powder imparts a sweet-savory taste sort of like toasted nuts and in doing so, tempers the sweetness of baked desserts a bit. It also browns breads beautifully.
Yep, it's marvelous in chocolate chip cookies. just sayin'.
Malted milk powder doesn't affect how yeast or other ingredients work. It's also one of those "to your own taste" additions like salt & pepper. But you do have to make a substitution to keep the balance in your ingredients, so I'd suggest substituting 1-2 tablespoons of malted milk powder for 1-2 tablespoons of flour in your dessert baking to start with. If you use a bread machine, substitute malted milk powder for the dry milk in your recipe. In the hands-on bread baking I do, I substitute 1/4 cup malted milk powder for 1/4 cup flour.
*The thing about this and the whole reason for my original questions was basically
another question: Have you noticed that your grandmother's and mother's recipes sometimes don't turn out the same when
you make them? It could be they used different brands of ingredients like yeast or baking powder, or even flour; it could be a difference in the way they did it; and—here's the biggie—it could be they had little "secret" ingredients they didn't write down and didn't think to mention. My mom didn't have many written recipes and my grandmother had none at all. I had to learn by surreptitiously watching them, then casually asking questions later. And THAT'S how I learned about the malted milk powder.