Cookie making for the lazy

Simple: just make one big cookie. Then, if you like, you can use a cutter to make this:

Those two are for you. I took the rest of them to my neighbors for San Valentino, even though I am celebrating San Faustino, patron saint of singles. I don’t know what shape represents him, so hearts will have to do.

This is a butterscotch bar or brownie. I don’t have a jelly roll pan, so I use two tart pans for a recipe or one for half a recipe. It works. It takes only 15 minutes to bake in that size, too.

I am doing this recipe because eg had some bad luck with a similar recipe from “The Joy of Cooking” which she said came out as firm as a surfboard. I am giving you the whole recipe, but I only made half this amount. They’d be even nicer iced with melted dark chocolate bars. Just lay a couple on the hot cookie and spread it when it melts. When it is all cool, it will be firm and shiny. Or, you can make a ganache using chocolate and cream and spread that over.

Butterscotch Bars
preheat oven to 175°C or 350°F
makes a bunch

4 ounces or 113 g butter
2 cups or 500 ml packed brown sugar (in Italy, at your equo e solidale shop)

Put these into a pan twice as big as you think you need and put it over low heat. Heat and stir until it is bubbly, the take it off the heat to cool. Don’t rush with higher heat or it WILL burn!

2 eggs

Beat these one at a time into the cooled butter and sugar mixture.

2 cups or 276 g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix these together and stir thoroughly into the pot of warm buttery stuff.

1 cup chopped nuts. I used quickly toasted hazlenuts, but the recipe asked for walnuts.

Stir these into the battter.

Spread this heavy batter into a jellyroll pan if you have one, or into two tart pans if you don’t. Put them into the heated oven and cook the one big one up to 25 minutes, but check before then, because mine are always cooked before then and they should be still soft in the center to be chewy like a brownie. If making smaller ones, 15 minutes should absolutely do it.

If you are trying to be cute or romantic, cut shapes out with a sharp cutter. Otherwise, just cut them into squares and hide them. They also freeze quite well. The crumbs left from cutting them make me think that they’d go really well stirred into vanilla ice cream.