Butterscotch Cookies

During the Christmas holidays I discovered Kitchen Time on Channel 72, 2 and a half hours of cooking shows for my viewing pleasure!!! I was very excited. In fact, I was so excited that I traded one of my Christmas gifts (tickets to see Avenue Q) for a PlayTV for our PS3 so I could record the shows when I went back to work. So, every weekday I queue up the shows for recording and then watch them once I get home.

I've never watched the Martha Stewart Show before. I hadn't really had much to do with Martha at all. However, the more I watched the show, the more Martha grew on me. Now I'm all about the Martha way and I've signed up for many a Martha newsletter.

The Cookie of the Day newsletter has to be my favourite. A new cookie recipe every day? Awesome! I love waking up to see the latest cookie. Last weekend one of the cookies were Schrafft's Butterscotch Cookies and they looked so divine I had to make them pretty much straight away, especially since they looked so easy.

Cookie indulgence had to be put on hold for a little bit as I didn't have any pecans or skim milk powder, but a quick trip to the supermarket fixed that. Did you know that I couldn't find skim milk powder in less than a 1kg packet? All I needed was 2 tablespoons! Now I have a big container of skim milk powder in my pantry. Lucky the biscuits were tasty because I'm going to have to make a lot of batches to use up all the powder before its best before date.

I am not a big fan of nuts in cookies but I do like pecans, so I compromised by processing them quite finely. The flavour was still there, the chunky bits were not. The batter was very very light and fluffy, like there were whipped egg whites in there. It was also very tasty. I used my small one and a half teaspoon ice cream scoop to measure out the batter because I felt that a tablespoon dollop would make the cookies too big. The cookies came out of the oven lovely and puffy but they did sink after a moment, leaving flat and chewy discs of brown sugary goodness.

They are quite sweet, D wanted to make some with chocolate chips and while I do have to make them again to use all my skim milk powder I think that chocolate chips might push the cookies into the too sweet territory. The mixture made heaps. I can't remember exactly but it was five or six trays of 12 cookies each time. I couldn't fit them all in my cookie tin. They are very more-ish though so I guess it was good that there were so many.

I took these to work where my colleagues seemed to like them. They lasted all week, not because we weren't eating them, but because there were so many of them!

Schrafft's Butterscotch Cookies
from MarthaStewart.com

200g unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups dark-brown sugar
1 large egg
2 tablespoons skim milk powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup finely chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celcius. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar. Beat in egg, dry milk, and vanilla.

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. With the mixer running, slowly add flour mixture to butter mixture. Fold in pecans.

Drop heaping tablespoons of batter onto prepared baking sheets about 2 inches apart. Lightly flour your fingers and press each piece of batter into circle.

Transfer to oven and bake until lightly browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.