My kids wanted a special treat for New Year’s Eve. They asked for popcorn. We reserve popcorn for special occasions, so I decided to make this a really special occasion in the interest of establishing some more food traditions for holidays. We currently only have food traditions established for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and of course some form of a dessert of the recipient’s request on birthdays. The other holidays need some goodies associated with them, so I decided to go one better than just popcorn. I decided to make chocolate and butterscotch popcorn.
I had a little leftover chocolate I had used for dipping orange peel around Christmas. I had placed it in a glass pyrex bowl so it would be available for dipping something else later and we wouldn’t waste any of it. I knew it would harden once cooled. So I decided to whip out a batch of thickened butterscotch sauce based on the filling in my Butterscotch Obsession Bars, melt up the chocolate and drizzle both over some stove-popped popcorn. Unfortunately, the butterscotch didn’t harden on the popcorn has I had hoped, so that recipe goes back to the drawing board. It stayed moist and made for a fun but sticky mess that the kids enjoyed. But what was left made an awesome dip for apples. Or it would be great over ice cream. And I’m also going to share another recipe next week showing you another great treat I made with the leftover butterscotch sauce.
My son is dairy-free, but he does just fine with butter. So I used coconut cream instead of dairy cream. Choose which one works for your situation. The only issue is that butterscotch relies on cooked butter for part of its flavor profile, so if you use coconut oil instead of butter to make this, a lot of the flavor will be lost in the translation. My apologies for those of you who must strictly avoid dairy.
Check back soon for a wonderful recipe made using this Butterscotch Sauce!
Butterscotch Sauce
4 Tbs (1/4 cup or a 1/2 stick) butter
scant 1/2 cup rapadura or coconut palm sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream or coconut cream or coconut milk
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
In a 2-quart or larger saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in the rapadura, cream and salt. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, reduce heat so that the mixture stays at a simmer instead of a rolling boil and cook for 5-10 minutes, whisking constantly. The longer you cook the mixture, the thicker the sauce will be. The sauce in the picture above was cooked for about 10 minutes and reached 200 degrees on a candy thermometer.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool briefly. Whisk in the vanilla extract and taste. Adjust the salt and extract until you like the taste of the sauce. Store any leftovers in the fridge and consume within 3 days.
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Do you have a similar recipe for Caramel sauce? 🙂