Hi guys I"m Laura Vitale and on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen I'm going to show
you a re ally easy treat.
This is a scotcharoo - the way I like to think of a scotcharoo is kind of like a hybrid between
a buckeye which is a delicious little rice cereal peanut butter chocolate ball, and a
butterscotch rice crispy treat.
Mix them to combine, and that's what you get.
And they are so good, absolutely addictive, when you make these get them out of your house
as soon as humanly possible because you will consume the entire 9 by 13 pan, I should know
because I have tried.
Let me run you through the ingredients, the list is short and sweet, kind of like me,
you need some rice cereal to start.
I have this in a big pot because you need a lot of surface to toss it.
I also have some creamy smooth peanut butter.
You need some granulated sugar, this is some light corn syrup, you can use honey if you
want to.
I've got some vanilla extract and you're also going to need some dark chocolate chips and
some butterscotch chocolate chips which I have in the back because there's not a ton
of room here.
Alright, so let's get started and like I said if you don't want to use light corn syrup
you can use honey if you want to, the only difference is that honey is going to give
you a bit of a floraly after taste, delicious, but I really want the pure peanut butter chocolate
and butterscotch to come through and I don't want anything to disturb that so that's why
I'm using light corn syrup.
So, in the saucepan I'm going to add the sugar and the corn syrup, and keep in mind that
this is by no means something that you should make often, it's a total treat once in a blue
moon you can make this but like I said it's a very sweet, very indulgent, and it uses
ingredients that I don't usually use on a normal basis, so worth the splurge!
I'm going to bring this to a simmer, just want to cook it long enough for the sugar
to dissolve and then I'll show you the next step.
Once you bring it to a simmer and it comes up to a boil, you don't want to boil this
for a long time you just want to turn this off because the sugar is just about dissolved
at this point, you turn that baby off, and you're going to add your peanut butter.
Let me switch to a spatula because it's a little bit easier to get the peanut butter
out, now this is not the time to use the all natural peanut butter because it will split
and it will be a disaster, so just add smooth peanut butter right in carefully because you
do have boiling sugar and you want to make sure that you don't splash it on yourself
so add that right in along with a splash of good quality vanilla extract and now all you're
going to do is stir this together until the peanut butter kind of is melted and it's harmonious
and it's smooth and wonderful in that corn syrup mixture, and as you can see it's happening
it doesn't take very long at all, you just need to be patient and just stir.
Then just pour this, make sure you're using a heat proof spatula if you are going to use
a spatula.
Pour that right in - ah smells so good!
And then you just mix, you want to - this is why I like to use a big pot - because I
like to make sure that I mix it really well and if I'm using a bowl and it's not big enough,
then everything goes everywhere.
Alright, once you have everything pretty thoroughly mixed, you're going to just dump the whole
shabang into a 9 by 13 inch baking dish that you've lined with parchment paper and you've
sprayed with non-stick spray.
You can use coconut oil if you want to, this just helps things not stick - got it out!
Alright and now what I'm doing now is I'm just using my spatula, and I'm just kind of
moving things around to make sure everything's even then just kind of pushing down on everything
to compact this a little bit and then what I'm going to do next is I'm going to just
mix together the chocolate chips, the bittersweet chocolate and the buttersweet - my goodness
can I just get a sentence out without complicating things?
- Butterscotch chips and the other chocolate chips - melt them together, badda bing meet
me back here to smear it.
There you go!
Alright, my chocolate chips are almost melted, at the very last second I just kind of like
to mix it all in myself and just melt the rest of those chips just with the residual
heat just so I know I'm not burning my chocolate, now I'm using bittersweet chocolate and butterscotch
chips because the butterscotch obviously is traditional in a scotcharoo - but most people
like to use a milk chocolate or a semi-sweet but I think there's so much sweetness going
on that you need a little bit of dark chocolate just to kind of offset that and that's why
I like to use dark chocolate and the butterscotch.
And then you just pour this gorgeous rather beautiful shiny lava like mixture on top and
then just smooth it out.
Just get it nice and smooth from one corner to the other, kind of get it in as even as
you can get it because it's kind of important, and now it's important that you just kind
of let this cool and set before you cut into them, so I'm just going to set them aside
until I'm ready for them which will be in a couple of hours and then we will cut and
serve!
Alright, my scotcharoos have set now for a couple of hours, don't mind me that I can't
cut straight, it's just the story of my life but it doesn't really matter because these
smell so good and they're so mmm!
That butterscotch smell with the chocolate, I love life!
Mmm!
There's no words, not too sweet, perfect, perfect balance of peanut butter to butterscotch,
slightly crumbly not too too dense, but absolutely perfection!
Ugh!
Why do I keep looking at it like it's going to do something magnificent?
Go to LauraintheKitchen.com to get the written recipe, I hope you have enjoyed spending time
with me I'll give you the bite, come on!
I'll see you next time, bye!