Mom's Butterscotch Cookies

As I write this (Saturday) it is the day of my mother's funeral. I wanted to bake something in my mom's memory today and the first thing which came to mind was these fabulous Butterscotch Cookies.

My mother used to bake these for us all the time when I was a child, either these or her soft molasses cookies. I've just realised that I don't have that recipe on here either, so I will have to bake them soon to share with you.

To be honest when we were kids we were not overly fond of these. We kind of took them for granted and not the treat that they were. We wanted cream stuffed store bought cookies . . . from the Keebler Elves, baked in a tree. We were not mature enough to appreciate the finer qualities and value of homemade goodies as opposed to store bought. (We liked frozen chicken pot pies for crying out loud, and Frozen TV dinners! 😝)

Actually we did enjoy these, we never turned them down . . . and my favourite ones were the ones that had lumps of brown sugar in them that hadn't quite gotten mixed totally into the dough. They ended up like little bits of butterescotch candy. Bonus!

These are refrigerator, slice and bake cookies. You make the dough and shape it into a log and then chill it overnight, ready to slice and bake as you need. Fresh baked cookies on call!

Flavoured with vanilla and brown sugar . . . nothing more . . . I used Muscovado brown sugar this time and I like them even more. (Muscovado brown sugar is a less refined brown sugar.)

They do use white vegetable fat . . . something like Crisco, Tenderflake, Trex, White Flora or the like. I have never made them with butter so I don't know how they would work with butter. I've always just used the white vegetable fat. I am not a snob that way.

I don't bake things like this often enough to be worried about any ill effects from using white vegetable fat. There are plenty of other things to worry about.

These are lovely and crisp . . .

See that lovely little lump of brown sugar there . . . that's mine!

Crisp and perfectly dunkable . . .

Equally at home with a hot cuppa as they are with a tall cold glass of milk!

They are delicious. I suspect they were a family recipe and one that my grandmother used to make for my mother, although in those days they would have used either lard or rendered bacon fat . . .

For me they are a lovely bit of delicious nostalgia and a fitting remembrance of a mother who loves us enough to bake us cookies from scratch, even if they were not always appreciated.

Yield: 5 dozenAuthor: Marie Rayner