Saturday, October 3, 2009

Butterscotch


Recently, I made butterscotch, a hard toffee sweet, as gifts for various people. It was amazingly simple to do. If you feel inclined to make your own butterscotch, the recipe (from p80 of the Australian Womens Weekly Sweet book) is as follows:


2 cups caster sugar

1/3 cup water
2/3 cup glucose syrup
125g chopped unsalted butter


Grease a 19cm x 29cm baking tray, and line with baking paper so that there is a 5cm overhang all the way around.



Put all of the ingredients other than the butter into a small saucepan, and stir over a low heat until the sugar has melted. Bring the mixture to the boil, and boil uncovered for 15 minutes or until the mixture is golden brown in colour (150 degrees Celsius on a candy thermometer).



Remove the pan from the heat and allow the bubbles to subside before stirring through the butter until smooth. Pour the mixture into the prepared tray, allow it to stand for 10 minutes, then mark it into squares using a sharp knife in slashes reaching right to the bottom of the pan. (If the mixture runs back in to fill up the slashes, allow the mixture to stand a little longer and try again).



Allow the butterscotch to set completely at room temperature, then break it into squares along the pre-marked slashes. Wrap sweets individually in small squares of greaseproof paper.



I placed my sweets into home-labelled sweet bags for gift-giving (labels from the HP website):





I also cross-stitched on tea towels to go with each bag of sweets:





I completed my gifts by boxing them individually and labelling the boxes with a cute gift label that I downloaded from 74 Lime Lane:


I thought that these looked pretty neat!!! And if you were one of my Pay It Forward winners, one of these will be winging its way to you.

Hope you are all having a great weekend.

15 comments:

  1. What a wonderful and thoughtfull gift to give, far better than the shop made once.
    I would be more happy if someone gave me a gift like this than any fancy stuff from a shop they bought.
    I love butterscotch sweets and this just looks so so good.

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  2. You are so clever. The packages look delightful.

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  3. Your butterscotch sweet reminds me of Greek spoon sweets. Great job with the packaging.

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  4. Simple but effective. Love it!

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  5. AND she cross stitches.. amazing, just amazing.

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  6. The butterscotch looks awesome and your cross stitches are really cute! What lucky recipients to receive a bag of butterscotch candies from you.

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  7. Wow - you really went for it, didn't you? What fun! Butterscotch takes me right back to childhood. Used to love it, but have never made it.

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  8. Your gifts look really great! What a nice touch with the homemade candy and the tea towels.

    Thank you for the ideas - I have a hard time knowing how to package things to give them away and this gives me some inspiration!

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  9. Thanks Happy Cook. The Pay It Forward theme was "homemade" - originally I came up with the teatwoel idea only but thought it needed smething else, so the butterscotch was created. I love butterscotch too - these tasted like Werthers hard candies, if you have had those.

    Thanks Barabra- I have discovered craft blogs, and they have so many amazing ideas and free downloads.

    Thanks Ivy. I am still very curious about Greek spoon sweets, and must try one of your recipes one day soon.

    Thanks Brenda :)

    LOL Y - I wish, but thanks.

    Hi Palidor, thanks.

    Hi Ghetti, these are just like Werthers (the hard ones) - you are supposed to get 150 squares out of it, but I got more like 55!

    Hi Jill, thanks. I am not good at creative packaging either and just went roaming around the shops - originally I was going to buy party sweet bags but couldn't find any, and the boxes were a blind stab in the dark.

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  10. Those butterscotch candies look WONDERFUL. And I LOVe all the packages....you're SO talented!!!!!

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  11. What a lovely idea, and perfect to use up some of the glucose syrup I have sitting in the cupboard too!

    Hmm, perhaps I should get out that microwave turkish delight recipe while I'm at it, and make up mixed boxes...

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  12. you are so good and i am so bad - you were my pay it forward winner and i havent even sent you your gift yet!!! i am so sorry. I promise to post it in the next two weeks

    Tammy

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  13. LOL - I'm not really, but thanks Jennifer!

    Hi Dragon ,sounds like a great idea - I heart turkish delight :) And it's pink - perfect for your girl's night in.

    LOL Tammy - I am not as good as you think. I won a Pay it Forward from a different blogger almost 12 months ago (which I have never received :)), and in turn, I drew my own winners - so it has taken me nearly 10 months into the 12 month period allowed to send my parcels.

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  14. How sweet! (pardon the pun :P ) What a lovely gift.

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  15. wow! those are beautiful! i've never thought to make homemade butterscotches, but i'll bet they're amazing!

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Thanks for dropping by!