Henry and I were in the Orange County Airport waiting for our flight back to NYC after 3 weeks in California. I opened Pandora’s box by contemplating buying a little bag of 12 butterscotch squares (my favorite See’s candy!) Henry didn’t understand why I was debating the purchase so much. I didn’t want to remind myself how much I liked them thus making it easier to resist. He told me not to buy them. But I didn’t listen. Henry wanted me to break open the bag on the plane but I said “no” they should be savored on a special occasion when we get home. Well, we got back to our apartment and Henry was ready to have a try. I gave him one. There were 12 in the bag and I said, “We each can have 4.” Anyway, Roger and I left to meet a friend for lunch and when we came back Henry confessed, “I ate 4 Mom.” He was hooked. Next thing I knew he was asking Roger to take him to the store to buy some ingredients. Then he charged forward trying to recreate these delicious candies. I took a nap to recover from the jet lag from the red eye. Later after smelling something good in the kitchen I went in to find out what it was. There was nothing. I asked Henry about it and he said angrily, “I just wasted $7 in ingredients!” What happened? I looked in the trash and found his experiment. I guess I was more curious than germophobic and reached into the trash can and unwrapped the parchment paper filled with his brown sugar, butter, white chocolate concoction and tasted it. It was delicious and tasted surprisingly close to the filling! How did he do that? I had searched years ago on the internet to find a recipe and never really found a good one. Anyway the next day he made another batch. He is such a whirlwind in the kitchen it was hard to get pictures. This is how he said he did it. He took 2 sticks of butter and whipped them until creamy and light in the kitchenaid mixer. He slowly mixed in half of a box of brown sugar and heated the other half for a minute in the microwave. He melted a bag of white chocolate chips over a double boiler. He added the hot brown sugar and then stirred in the partially melted white chocolate. I am not sure of the reasons or science behind his method but somehow it turned out to taste very close to the See’s candy version. He had to squeeze out a lot of extra butter that separated from the mixture and spread it into a parchment lined pan to harden. He dipped the squares into melted milk chocolate bars. They tasted great! The only thing we would change would be to have the chocolate coating thicker and maybe add semi sweet chocolate for a stronger flavor. I am still amazed that he figured this out almost by accident!
