Butterscotch Bar Recipe

There comes a time in your life when you want to do everything yourself and not rely on somebody else. So instead of buying baked goods from the store, I decided to just make them myself. The first step? Buy an oven!

I bought my first electric oven last Saturday. It's from the trusted brand Westinghouse. Originally priced at Php 3,100, the oven was on sale so I only paid P 2,200 = the original price minus the discount and the Sodexo gift certificate I won at an office event. It actually looks more like a microwave than a baking or toaster oven.

I was so excited to use it that I couldn't sleep that night. I had to gather enough energy to keep from using it right away since it was already very late. I still managed to heat up some pizza my cousin brought as pasalubong though. Just can't help it!!

My First Baking Experience

Papa, Mama, Ate Novelyn and I went to SME Week, an event that offered free seminars for Small Business Enterprise owner wannabes organized by the Department of Trade and Industry at the Phil Trade Center. My mother wanted to learn how to make tocino, siomai, barbecue, etc. while I was after theoretical topics on business.

On the second day, I joined Ate Novelyn in attending a seminar for making pastries and baked goods - butterscotch, brownies and cappuccino bar more specifically. The butterscotch and brownies were veeeerrry delicious!! We decided to do the Butterscotch first.

Butterscotch Bar

Butterscotch is the pastry we usually see in Pasalubong food shops. Usually wrapped in aluminum foil, then by colored cellophane wrapper (the one used for yema), Butterscotch is a sweet and buttery treat that people with sweet tooth love.

Here is the recipe provided by DTI for the Butterscotch bar.

BUTTERSCOTCH RECIPE

Ingredients:

• 2 cups Brown sugar (spooned lightly)
• 2 pcs Eggs, whole
• 1/4 tsp. Maple extract (optional)
• 1 cup Butter, melted
• 2 cups All Purpose Flour
• 2 tsp Baking powder
• 1 can Condensed milk, small (or half of the big one)
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 1/2 cup Light syrup
• 1 cup Ground nuts

Procedure:

1. In a mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients, except sugar and salt.
2. Melt the butter, on a separate container, remove from fire, then add sugar, eggs, salt and stir well.
3. Add condensed milk and syrup, mix until combined.
4. Gradually add flour and ground nuts, mix well.
5. Pour in the prepared baking pan on wax paper, then bake at 35 minutes. 
6. Remove from the oven / molder and wax paper while it is still hot.
7. Let it cool before cutting into bars.

Here is our mixture. We didn't really reach step 7 because we don't have wax paper, so we couldn't remove the butterscotch from the pan. Plus, we also didn't have aluminum foil and cellophane wrapper to wrap the Butterscotch bars in. So now, we are just eating it from the pan. hehe

The recipe didn't really say at how much heat we should bake it. Since I am such an inexperienced child with these things, I did something horrendous!

My cousin, Ate Novelyn said that we can follow the procedure for the brownies, which is to bake at 30-35 minutes at 180 degrees.

Unfortunately, I made the silly decision to "pre-heat" the oven. And this was what happened:

Woooooops!!! The smoke coming out from the oven caused quite a stir and my mom was so shocked. It was our first time to actually use it for baking, and now we already burned a recipe! Good thing we used 2 pans. This one was on the higher level, so it was heated first.

While this pan looked nasty, the other one looks like nothing has happened to it yet. The burnt one was not yet cooked so I put it back in the oven and baked at 120 degees Celsius to be safe. Apparently, this was too safe. It should be 180 degees. I also put the burnt Butterscotch back in the oven because the insides were still liquidy.

After 35 minutes, I was not yet satisfied with the burnt one but I was afraid that if it stayed in the oven much longer, the whole thing will turn black totally (first time baker, remember?) So I took it out and waited for the other one to cook.

We waited... and waited... and waited.

120 degrees at 40 minutes and it was still moist! But I took it out anyway. So now we have one delectably chewy Butterscotch pan in the refrigerator. The burnt one was actually delicious too!

It was too sweet though so we might have to cut down on the condensed milk the next time. It also had too much nuts (for my taste). But I say, this Butterscotch by a first time baker is enough to make me want to do more of it -- baking that is!

Here is a picture of our masterpiece with flash.