Week 6: Krispie Butterscotch Cookies

According to a very reliable source (i.e. Wikipedia), butterscotch was traditionally made with one pound each of butter and sugar, and a quarter pound of a sugary syrup known as treacle, which I’ve never even heard of. Regardless, I knew that this toffee-coloured little piece of heaven was too good to pass up when I saw bags of butterscotch chips displayed at the store while I was home for the holidays. I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but then again, I buy most of my baking ingredients without a specific goal in mind.  I like to let the ingredients guide me to my creations.  

In search of a recipe to use my new find, I came across countless recipes for some horrendous concoction involving coloured marshmallows and peanut butter (which my sister actually enjoys quite a lot) and many others that would involve melting the chips to use the butterscotch flavour to complement something else. But this would not do, if I was going to bake with these, they were going to have play the leading role.  Finally I found this interesting recipe for cookies that have crisped rice cereal in them and deemed it worthy of my precious butterscotch chips.

These came out deliciously light and airy thanks to the cereal, a perfect platform for sinfully sweet butterscotch. If it’s any representation of how good they are, I’ve eaten about four in the last hour. I made some alterations to the original recipe and made sure to mix carefully near the end so the cereal wouldn’t get pulverised to a dusty mess. I suggest you do the same, unless a dusty mess is what you’re looking for.

Enjoy!

Krispie Butterscotch Cookies

Yield: 56 cookies

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups crisp rice cereal
• 1/2 cup butterscotch chips

1. Preset oven to 350F
2. In large bowl, cream butter and sugar
3. Add egg and vanilla; beat until well blended. Add flour, salt, and baking soda, mixing well. Stir in cereal and butterscotch chips. (mix gently, refer to above ‘dusty mess’ comment)
4. Drop by heaping teaspoon onto cookie sheet
5. Bake for 10-11 minutes until lightly browned. Remove cookies to cooling racks

Per cookie:
62 calories | 4.41g sugar | 2.2g fat

update: These were clearly very well received by my lab class, not that we were eating in the lab or anything *wink