Sarah picked out this recipe to try next, but I made the classic mistake of beginning preparations without making sure I had all the ingredients.
My first discovery was that I had no shortening, but a) I'm kind of grossed out by shortening, and b) Sarah pointed out that using butter to make "butterscotch bars" makes more sense than using shortening. So I used butter.
As the butter melted in the saucepan, I found that I only had a half-cup of brown sugar left in the bag. At the back of the cupboard was an old box of brown sugar, but it had long ago dried to a solid rock. Jabbing at it with a knife was futile. There was no way I could soften it enough to get it into the measuring cup, so I decided to just dissolve it into the melted butter. The sugar was so rock-hard that I had to tear and peel the packaging off the golden-brown brick. Since I couldn't accurately measure it, I had to estimate how much there was, and I was probably off by at least a quarter-cup. Also, it took forever to dissolve.
The next deficiency was that my usually reliable pecan stash was depleted. Happily, I had a bag of unshelled pecans sitting on top of the fridge, so I put Sarah and Kate to work cracking and shelling enough to make 1/2 cup, which was rather tedious work, but they did it with minimal grumbling.
I happened to have exactly two eggs left - close call there.
Last, but definitely not least, I only had about a cup of all-purpose flour. Arrrrrgh! But then I remembered a box of cake flour in the cabinet, and so supplemented with that to make 1-3/4 cups.
So, altogether, I altered the recipe with butter instead of shortening, either too much or too little brown sugar, and partial cake flour for all-purpose flour.
But everyone loved it.
When I first took the pan out of the oven, it looked like a cake, so I cut warm cake-sized squares and served them with forks on plates. Sarah suggested topping it with some of my homemade caramel sauce, and it was all soft and rich and yummy.
On second look the following morning, I realized that they really are more like brownies in texture and density, so I cut them into smaller squares.
Flavor-wise, I have mixed opinions - basically, my opinion vs. everyone else's. I think they are okay - definitely not bad at all, but they're not knocking my socks off. Steve loves them. Other people say they're delicious. But I'm a huge fan of butterscotch, and I'm not getting a big kick out of these the way I'd hoped.
I have since replenished my pantry with all the missing ingredients, and am determined to have another go at this really simple recipe. My only hangup is with the shortening. Would shortening really produce a better Butterscotch Bar than butter? Sarah pointed out that the majority of the recipes in the box seem to call for shortening, margarine, or oleo; I understand that it was more standard for mid-century recipes, so maybe, really, butter is better. Which means I'll have to make the recipe two more times to find out.
But not today. We are currently buried in snow by the Blizzard of 2011, and I don't want all that dessert sitting around a house inhabited by only three people.
More on this later....
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