(Note - I do not include the recipe, if I find an exact match at allrecipes.com I'll link it for any recipe I do. Also I don't have pictures for my first few experiments, but when I redo this recipe I will add them at that time.)
A similar recipe to this from allrecipes.com is Butterscotch Icebox Cookies.
So what recipe to try first? Well I have a particular soft spot for butterscotch so as I paged through the recipes, this one caught my eye.
The recipe was off to a different start right away, typically every cookie recipe I’ve done has always started with putting either butter or shortening into the mixing bowl with some sugar and creaming them together and maybe one or two other wet ingredients. Then combining all the dry ingredients and adding those at the same time to the butter/sugar mixture.
First step here, melt the butter. Neat, first time I’ve done that for a cookie recipe. Although they talked in the recipe about melting the butter in a sauce pan and then mixing in the sugar, I put the melted butter in the mixing bowl instead. By the way, it was brown sugar in this recipe, and I always use dark brown sugar in baking (unless otherwise specified.)
As as aside I have a KitchenAid mixer and I highly recommend investing in one if you do much baking. This thing has been serving me reliably for more than a decade and powers through anything I throw at it.
So I added the sugar to the melted butter and mixed, this was decidedly different in appearance from the usual practice, next to add was an egg and the instruction to ‘beat mixture until light colored.’ With enough air beaten in it soon looked lighter, and boy did it look different from the usual cookie batter started from creamed butter and sugar.
It was like a goo of some sort with a heavy syrupy texture that held onto the pattern the beater left behind for a few moments before it smoothed back out, very cool.
As is usual for cookie recipes, lumping in all the dry ingredients came next, flour and soda. Then a final step was to add some vanilla and nuts. Although I like nuts in cookies, the family is pretty opposed, so I skipped the nuts. the result was a dough with a texture that was decidedly different in feel and look than the usual doughs I make. Very smooth and somewhat sticky. So how to handle this stuff was the next question.
The dough had to be chilled, once that was done you rolled into balls and placed on a cookie sheet. At this point I normally expect to smush the dough flat with something, but this time, you leave them alone.
So next was to bake this cookie sheet covered with brown spheres. Now some may find this not the best practice, but I use insulated cookie sheets. I like the results, no burnt bottoms and chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies come out perfect. So that’s what I use. There can be some downsides, but I haven’t experienced them yet.
The result was very cute, from a round sphere they melted down into perfectly round cookies with a slight hump in the middle. Very nice. These ended up with a nice golden brown color. And they had a really nice texture with some ‘tooth’ to it once they had cooled a little. A nice chewiness to them. But sadly, they didn’t really taste much like butterscotch.
I brought them in to work and got the same response, nice, but not butterscotch flavored.
Lessons learned:
Take only parts of the dough out of the fridge at a time for rolling into balls. When it got too warm it became very tacky and started sticking to my hands.
Next time possibly try baking longer. I did my usual 9 minutes for a cookie in a 375° oven, but perhaps a little longer will produce a stronger flavor.
The recipe was off to a different start right away, typically every cookie recipe I’ve done has always started with putting either butter or shortening into the mixing bowl with some sugar and creaming them together and maybe one or two other wet ingredients. Then combining all the dry ingredients and adding those at the same time to the butter/sugar mixture.
First step here, melt the butter. Neat, first time I’ve done that for a cookie recipe. Although they talked in the recipe about melting the butter in a sauce pan and then mixing in the sugar, I put the melted butter in the mixing bowl instead. By the way, it was brown sugar in this recipe, and I always use dark brown sugar in baking (unless otherwise specified.)
As as aside I have a KitchenAid mixer and I highly recommend investing in one if you do much baking. This thing has been serving me reliably for more than a decade and powers through anything I throw at it.
So I added the sugar to the melted butter and mixed, this was decidedly different in appearance from the usual practice, next to add was an egg and the instruction to ‘beat mixture until light colored.’ With enough air beaten in it soon looked lighter, and boy did it look different from the usual cookie batter started from creamed butter and sugar.
It was like a goo of some sort with a heavy syrupy texture that held onto the pattern the beater left behind for a few moments before it smoothed back out, very cool.
As is usual for cookie recipes, lumping in all the dry ingredients came next, flour and soda. Then a final step was to add some vanilla and nuts. Although I like nuts in cookies, the family is pretty opposed, so I skipped the nuts. the result was a dough with a texture that was decidedly different in feel and look than the usual doughs I make. Very smooth and somewhat sticky. So how to handle this stuff was the next question.
The dough had to be chilled, once that was done you rolled into balls and placed on a cookie sheet. At this point I normally expect to smush the dough flat with something, but this time, you leave them alone.
So next was to bake this cookie sheet covered with brown spheres. Now some may find this not the best practice, but I use insulated cookie sheets. I like the results, no burnt bottoms and chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies come out perfect. So that’s what I use. There can be some downsides, but I haven’t experienced them yet.
The result was very cute, from a round sphere they melted down into perfectly round cookies with a slight hump in the middle. Very nice. These ended up with a nice golden brown color. And they had a really nice texture with some ‘tooth’ to it once they had cooled a little. A nice chewiness to them. But sadly, they didn’t really taste much like butterscotch.
I brought them in to work and got the same response, nice, but not butterscotch flavored.
Lessons learned:
Take only parts of the dough out of the fridge at a time for rolling into balls. When it got too warm it became very tacky and started sticking to my hands.
Next time possibly try baking longer. I did my usual 9 minutes for a cookie in a 375° oven, but perhaps a little longer will produce a stronger flavor.
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