Toffee and caramel and butterscotch, oh my!

Does it seem to you this is a summer of butterscotch recipes? Cookies, bars, cakes- you name it. Well lucky me because butterscotch is a favorite - doesn’t have to be in baked goods either: butterscotch hard candy, butterscotch sticky toffee, butterscotch sauce (on vanilla ice cream, what else?) butterscotch fudge and just in case you still don’t get it, I also include anything labeled toffee and caramel (nearly the same thing as butterscotch) in this list. But when you combine it with chocolate (or cinnamon like Grace did in some of her recent recipes) you have a double whammy.

Now about Grace: please tell me you read her food blog- A Southern Grace. I never miss it. I love her way with words, love her recipes and her sense of humor; best of all, Grace has been a faithful reader and commenter on my blog which I bow down and thank her for as we all know how hard it is to get started and get comments. Don’t you love reading comments? Even on someone else’s blog. Some make me laugh, or offer great suggestions, or sympathize with our problems. I think comments keep us both happy and humble. Usually.

Well anyway….I just have to chime in on all these butterscotch recipes with my mother’s Toffee Cookies. They combine chocolate with the toffee and the cookies are crunchy, not soft. As with many of her recipes, I have a feeling this one came from one of her cooking classes as no author is credited on the recipe card. Usually she says: “Sally’s Birthday Cake” or “Aunt Suzie’s Bread Pudding”; but on this card….nothing. Therefore: cooking class.

While these really are cookies (I mean it, they are), they are cooked as though they are a bar and then cut diagonally. I can remember seeing mother laying her enormous yardstick over the baking pan, measuring and cutting so that each “cookie” ended up looking like a perfect diamond. (Of course then you are always left with the corners…. perfect for sneaking bites.) Also, she loved walnuts and used those. I love pecans so I substituted them. And she used Hershey’s chocolate bars- the thin ones. I used a combination of bittersweet and milk chocolate thin Ghirardelli bars. Your choice. I refrigerate mine because I live in a high humidity state; you northerners just need to place them in a sealed container.

Toffee Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup salted butter, softened

1 cup light brown sugar

1 egg yolk

1 1/2 cups flour

6 thin chocolate bars, any kind you want

1/3 cup chopped pecans, toasted, or walnuts if you prefer

1 teaspoon vanilla

Method:

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cream butter, sugar and add egg yolk. Add flour gradually. Add vanilla.

Spread dough in a lightly greased 15 1/2 by 10 1/2 by 1 inch pan. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

Lay chocolate bars on top. When they melt, spread them around and sprinkle with pecans.

When cool, cut in diagonals. I do this with a yardstick from opposite corners as a guide.