Butterscotch Bars

It’s been an interesting year, hasn’t it? I’ve been on a bit of a bender lately, getting rid of (or at least, reducing) paperwork that’s been piling up and holds little interest for me. I have so much that I had to buy more paper (as in, paper file folders) to store all that paperwork in which seems redundant, but living in a place where paper still rules supreme, and digitizing takes as long as filing, I’m stuck filing and storing.

One change in the world of paper has been food blogs, which started out for many as being places where you could “store” and share your favorite recipes. But I’ve noticed over the last few years that food blogs have become a lot slicker, more polished, and often “aspirational.” While I’m jealous of those who have the talent, and patience, for writing for search engines, and arranging flowers on top of multi-layer cakes, I really just enjoy cooking and baking.

I’m still a bit stuck in the past. And I’m also stuck with two folders that I’ve had for nearly twenty years, which traveled across the Atlantic with me, from the days of yore. They’re recipes that I clipped from magazines while I was culling them and in the old days, we just keep them in files.

They’ve been lingering in my office for years and I recently put the question to readers on Instagram whether I should bake and cook through them here on the blog, or toss ’em, even if it meant posting some duds. Around 95% of the people said to make them here, even if they don’t come out as imagined, and some (who think I have more time on my hands than I do…) suggested I “fix” recipes that I don’t love, to make them right. Recipe testing is a lot of work and I’d prefer to work on my own recipes than fix someone else’s, thanks. And a number of people offered “Just throw them away and unburden yourself” which is also compelling advice.

The latter is easier said than done, though, and I’m sure many of you agree with me and I think I’m stuck with these recipes that need to be made. And I thought I’d start with these Butterscotch Bars, mostly because I’ve had two bags of butterscotch chips with an expiration date that I won’t share with you, in my kitchen drawer, that I’ve been reluctant to throw out since I hauled them back from the U.S. who-remembers-when.

What’s funny is that I can barely remember what I had for lunch today but I remember buying these thinking I’d make Scotcheroos with them. I haven’t had them in years, but I remember a friend making them for a party in San Francisco and when I asked where he got the recipe, he said it was included in his PG&E bill (gas & electric), which of course, marks another date: When utility bills included recipes with them. The real kicker is that the recipe requires six cups of Rice Krispies so that makes them a no-go from the start around here. (Plus the recipe calls for 1 full cup/250ml of corn syrup, which would give people the vapors.)

Lest you look down on butterscotch chips, they’re not a regular part of my diet. However over the years, and mostly last year, I realized how lucky we are just to have the variety of foods that most of us have available to us. Also, life is short. While I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, having a tablespoon of butterscotch chips once every few years isn’t the fin du monde. Even Alice Waters admits to having had a few airport hot dogs and bags of chips.

I have a friend who was the pastry chef at a top-notch restaurant that had highly acclaimed butterscotch pudding on the menu. When I asked why hers was so good, she answered “Butterscotch Chips.” So if it’s good enough for diners at a fancy restaurant, it’s good enough for you and me.

These came from Cooking Light magazine, which no longer publishes a magazine. I wrote for them a few times back then, which was fun because I got to play around with recipes to make them low fat. They weren’t, however, low sugar. But back in the day, people weren’t as concerned about that as they are now. I grew up eating sugar straight from packets of sugar taken from the bowl at restaurants my parents took us out to for dinner, and I often bought rock candy (below); hard, large crystals of sugar you simply sucked on, which proudly announced it was made of “100% pure cane sugar.” Nowadays, if a parent gave a kid something like that, you’d get in as much trouble as if you stuck a lit cigarette in their mouth.

If you’re avoiding sugar, you probably want to stay away from recipes that have “butterscotch” in the title. The original recipe is a little radine (cheap) with the butterscotch chips, so I bumped them up because I want to get them off my hands, and reclaim that space in my pantry, and because I like butterscotch.

Another thing about magazine recipes from those days is that since space equaled money, an ad was worth more than words in a recipe, so recipes were a lot more concise than they are now, whereas online you can write and write and write. Recipes didn’t need to specify that yes, if you didn’t have a stand mixer, you could mix the ingredients by hand. They rarely told you how long you could keep a cake or batch of cookies, and if they could be frozen. But they were good lessons in how to be concise and get to the point, rather than – uh – meander, like I’m doing here.

The original recipe for these Butterscotch Bars was a mere 2×3-inch square, but in there, they do tell you precisely how to measure flour; lightly spoon into dry measuring cups and level with a knife, and they were already remarkably precise about baking times. None of this “About 25 to 30 minutes” business. This said precisely “28 minutes.”

The upside is that the recipe is simplicity in itself. Basically you’re just mixing everything up in a bowl, spreading it in a pan, strewing some butterscotch chips over the top – the Spanish translation on one package refers to them as trocitos de caramelo y mantequilla, which is more literal since butterscotch is something made with brown sugar, not necessarily caramel. (“Butterscotch” is sort of a challenge to translate in any language and I don’t know how you’d say it in French either.) However they were popular with my favorite Frenchman who marveled at their buttery, toffee-like taste, which I couldn’t describe very well, but he was too busy eating them to notice.