Butterscotch Syrup

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Yeah, I know, you’re thinking ‘the quart and a half will do it’, but you’re wrong. Pull out the three, and thank me later. Set the heat to medium-low, and dump in the sugar, then the first cup of water. Stir. A lot. Once everything’s melted and you’ve got that sugar haze suspended in the water, turn the heat up to medium-high, and prepare yourself for a goddamn adventure in stirring. Mostly, you want to keep it moving so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan, so a flat-ended spoon will serve you well, here. Now, this crap is going to foam like a motherfucker. Don’t worry, it’s supposed to do that.

After maybe ten or fifteen minutes, you’ll see it start to take on a melted-marshmallow sort of consistency. Pay the fuck attention. When it starts to take on a brown tinge, turn it off.

Add the baking soda and stir the fuck out of it, until you have a pile of butterscotch fluff. Then, s l o w l y stir in the boiling water. It’s going to spit and hiss and riot. Don’t get burned. Apparently, there’s a way to do this and not wind up with crunchy bits in it, but I did not discover it. Turn it back up to medium-low, and stir it a minute or two until it mostly smooths out. IDFK, I still wound up with some chunks, but the majority of that is a syrup.

It makes approximately a pint, but it is a real tight pint, so you may have some that won’t go in the jar. This is probably a good time to pick the lumps out, so you can fit more syrup. *laughs* I suggest canning jars, because they’re meant to handle the heat, so they’re less likely to explode if you pour hot syrup into them. Still, it probably wouldn’t kill you to warm the jar first, just to be safe.

What am I going to do with it? Put it in my horchata, with whiskey.