Roasted Milk Biscuits Recipe (Baked Milk Skin / 烤奶皮)

 This roasted milk biscuits recipe only needs a few ingredients, and is super quick and easy to make.

I bought a few packets of Inner Mongolian snack-inspired 烤奶皮 kǎo nǎipí (literally 'roasted/baked milk skin', named after the flavourful 'skin' that forms on top of hot milk while the surface cools) back from China recently and became utterly addicted to the crisp, crunchy texture and creamy, milky flavour.

While I was sad to know I wouldn't be able to recreate them because they seemed to have been partially freeze-dried (and freeze-dryers are expensive), I decided to look up if I could make anything similar. And I was in luck – roasted milk skin biscuits like these are, indeed, a thing, and also called 烤奶皮.

All the recipes I found were similar in that they all used butter and milk powder, but the other ingredients and method of cooking varied from recipe to recipe. Some used icing or caster sugar to sweeten, along with evaporated milk or cream, some used condensed milk instead of both sugar and evaporated milk and cream. Some baked them in an oven, some used a pizelle or waffle iron to cook them.

In the end, I decided on an icing-sugar-plus-evaporated-milk mixture, because I think milk powder itself is already quite sweet and wanted to take down the extra sugar a bit. I also added a tiny bit of salt to balance the sweetness and bring the milkiness out even more.

Ready? Let's go.

Ingredients:

20g butter, melted and cooled
15g icing sugar
20g evaporated milk
60g full fat milk powder
Pinch of salt

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160°C and line a large baking tray with non-stick baking paper.

2. In a bowl, stir all the ingredients together. Knead into a smooth dough with your hand (use a food-safe glove as it'll be a little sticky at first).

3. Roll out between two more sheets of baking paper, until about 5mm thick.

4. Use a biscuit cutter to cut out whatever shapes you like, and place the cutouts on the lined baking tray with a little space in between (they don't spread much so you don't need too much space).

5. Bake for 7–10 minutes, or until golden brown, and leave to cool completely before eating.

Enjoy, and have fun.