"butterscotch" news and stories

Ghost blondie in the spotlight. Photo: Monika Bartyzel.

Zombies, ghosts, bats and creepy crawlies -- these are the gems of Halloween, the lone holiday that lets the masses get dark and scary, the only time of the year when ghoulish elements are actually welcome in baking.

One of the easiest ways to get into the Halloween spirit with minimal special equipment is baking Halloween-themed brownies and blondies.There's no special skill required, yet the resulting treats are just how we like them: dense, rich and classically sweet. They can also be embellished with frosting to give the witch creepy eyes, the pumpkin a green stem or the ghost the proper shade of white.

Read on for two recipes prime for the task, with little twists that make these treats thrive.

Say hello to flatty and softy. Both come from the same batch of cookies, yet one is flat as all hell, and one is nicely shaped, and doesn't reveal the wonderful sea of butterscotch inside.

I've made many cookies over the years. Some I've loved; some I've hated. Sometimes something goes wrong. But I've never had a batch pull out two different results. I was trying out Accidental Hedonist's Butterscotch Cookies, taking out the nuts (hello, allergies) and adding in some extra chips. The dough looked delicious -- the perfect cold dough for the adult mouth with its sugar sweetness cut by wonderful dark rum flavor.

Then they went in the oven, and bled into hard, flat discs. The flavor was excellent, but the shape was not. So, I tried firming up the batter in the fridge for round two. They turned out exactly the same. I began to consider rejigging the recipe for next time. However, I had four cookies left over, so I put those on a piece of old parchment, waited for the other round to finish, and baked them last. Voila! Perfect cookies.

Can silicone baking mats really wreak havoc on a cookie? That's the only difference between the three batches. Share your thoughts below!

Usually when I'm itching for a dose of butterscotch, I'll whip up my favorite chocolate chip recipe and substitute butterscotch chips for the chocolate. But last night I was in the mood to try something different. Accidental Hedonist's recent Butterscotch Sundae Cookie post came to mind, but I couldn't remember which blog I saw it on. Google blog searching finally led me to it, as well as Double Butterscotch Cookies (The Taste of Home Cookbook) over at Baking Blonde. Which to do first?

I tackled the double butterscotch, which you can see above. Whether baked light or dark, these cookies are delicious. I made a few substitutions -- all butter rather than half butter/half shortening, I left out the nuts, and I used butterscotch chips rather than toffee bits. They're firm, but soft and chewy with great sugary flavor that's rich, but won't give you that stomach-churning rotted gut if you have two or three.

I didn't roll and slice the dough since I prefer the puffier texture, like the recipe suggests, but I might next time. I'm scheming up a way to have creamy waves of butterscotch in the cookies, rather than chips, to perfectly match the creamy cookie. If you've got a butterscotch cookie to rival this, please share it below! Some people want the perfect chocolate chip cookie, but some of us prefer that irresistible butterscotch.

Find more Christmas cookie ideas and Christmas recipes on KitchenDaily.

Of all the nuts out there, cashews are my very favorite (almonds and pecans do battle for the number two spot). This photo of a mound of cashews, waiting to become part of a Butterscotch Cashew Bar, caught my eye and sent me straight to the kitchen for a handful of cashews. Thanks to Jennifer for adding her picture to our Flickr pool.

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I have always been a sucker for butterscotch. When I was a kid, I would always choose one of those hard, orange butterscotch candies over a piece of chocolate. One those rare occasions when my family went out for ice cream sundaes, I would choose vanilla ice cream with hot butterscotch syrup drizzled over top (my mother, being a chocolate person herself, never understood my choice). While I don't always make the same selection these days (I did come around to chocolate sometime in my teens), I still love the flavor of real butterscotch.

Yesterday on Simply Recipes, Elise published a guest post written by Shuna Fish Lydon of the blog Eggbeater on how to make homemade butterscotch. The post comes with step-by-step pictures, which are extremely helpful for those of us who are never sure if the sugar/butter/cream mixture has cooked to the proper consistency. She makes it sounds really easy, which is at once both encouraging and a little dangerous, as the last thing I need in life is the ability to make butterscotch on demand.

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