Real Butterscotch: The Beauty Of Sugar And Dairy Transformed

Butterscotch is going through something of a revival. So much so, that two Kitchen Window regular contributors wanted to write about it. Therefore, welcome to the more-than-you-ever-thought-you-needed-to-know-about-butterscotch special coverage. Today is the second in our two-part butterscotch series. Last week's column has more recipes featuring this resurgent flavor.

Poor butterscotch. It seldom gets the love and understanding it deserves. On the few times we venture out past chocolate and vanilla, we are mostly content to open a bag of those artificial waxy yellow chips, or perhaps the cellophane-wrapped candies in Grandma's dish. But butterscotch — real butterscotch — is so much more.

In its truest form, butterscotch hinges upon sugar and dairy (and the beautiful things that happen to them both at high temperatures). Just as the bitter cacao bean needs to be fermented and sweetened and tweaked to become chocolate, butterscotch arrives when you tweak and transform a few humble elements into a perfect balance.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the term butterscotch doesn't have a hard and fast technical description. Scour a few cookbooks, and you'll find several variations. There are recipes that bring sugars to high temperature, creating a deliciously browned caramel that then gets a shot of dairy. You'll also find recipes that start with butter and brown sugar in a pan together, bringing them up to a simmer that may not reach the scalding temperatures of straight-on caramelization but still achieves a wonderful depth of flavor.

There are a few things going on here, according to food scientist Laura Shumow at the National Confectioners' Association. Yes, there's the caramelization of sugars, leading to that distinctive deep flavor and buttery beige color. But the dairy — be it from the eponymous butter, cream, condensed milk or really anything — goes through its own culinary transformation. When the amino acids in those milk proteins (and yes, even the mostly fat butter does have a helping of protein) combine with the sugar and a touch of heat, you get that delicious Maillard reaction — the browning that leads to a whole new world of flavor.

But butterscotch doesn't stop there. To that deliciously deepened sugar and dairy you add a few more elements. There's the perfume of vanilla and then a savory dose of salt, which give a depth to the buttery sweetness. Altogether, it creates a lovely balance. Plus there seems to be, at least for me, a nostalgia factor. Butterscotch tastes like comfort, like childhood. But we can also take that childhood love and give it a whole new grown-up incarnation.

I'm not one to complain about a straight-up bowl of butterscotch pudding, but there's no reason to stop there. The best of the butterscotch desserts — those that move from nursery sweet into sophisticated dinner party-worthy dessert — involve a bit of counterpoint. First, you can play off the flavor. A blob of barely sweetened whipped cream or creme fraiche cuts nicely through the richness of a butterscotch pudding or cake or pie, making each sweet bite all the more welcome. And any lover of salted caramel will tell you that a few grains of salt — especially some nice big flaky ones — heighten the drama. Which brings us to texture: A bit of crunch can help cut through the sweet creaminess. I'm partial to candied pecans, but just about any chopped nut will do (and browning them is even better), or chopped bits of toffee, or crunchy cacao nibs or just about anything you like.

Once you get to know butterscotch — and all its creamy, salty, crunchy accoutrements — you'll never go back to those waxy chips again. And you'll want to spread the word, bringing butterscotch into its rightful place in the pantheon beside chocolate and vanilla. Because butterscotch — real butterscotch — is a thing of beauty.

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Recipe: Butterscotch Budino With Caramel Sauce And Salt

This recipe is adapted from The Mozza Cookbook: Recipes from Los Angeles' Favorite Italian Restaurant and Pizzeria (Knopf, 2011) and has graced the table of Nancy Silverton's restaurant since it opened. It is pretty much everything you want: a buttery-smooth Italian take on butterscotch pudding, topped with a just-this-side-of-burnt caramel sauce, a sprinkling of flaky salt and a dollop of unsweetened whipped cream. Don't be afraid to really let your sugar darken — it's the key to the pudding's flavor.

Makes 12 servings

Budino

3 cups heavy cream

1 1/2 cups milk

3 extra-large egg yolks

1 extra-large egg

2/3 cup cornstarch

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt

5 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons whiskey

Caramel Sauce

1 cup heavy cream

1 whole vanilla bean

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup light corn syrup

Whipped cream (1 cup heavy cream whipped with 1/4 cup creme fraiche or sour cream, if desired)

Coarse salt

Fill a large bowl with ice water, and set a smaller bowl inside. Set a fine-mesh strainer inside the smaller bowl.

To make the budino, stir the cream and milk together in a medium bowl. In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks, egg and cornstarch together. Combine the brown sugar, salt and 1/2 cup water in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over high heat. Cook the sugar, without stirring, swirling the pan occasionally for even cooking, until the sugar is smoking, nutty smelling and very dark caramel color, 10 to 12 minutes. Reduce the heat to low, and immediately add the cream-milk mixture in a thin stream, stirring as you add. The sugar will seize and harden. Increase the heat to high, and cook until it dissolves back into a liquid, 5 to 7 minutes.

Turn off the heat, and ladle some of the hot cream and sugar into the eggs, whisking constantly to prevent curdling. Continue until you've added half the cream, then pour this mixture back into the saucepan, whisking, and cook until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Remove from heat, and whisk in the butter and whiskey.

Pour the mixture through the strainer into the bowl, then ladle into a dozen small glasses or ramekins. Chill for several hours until thickened and cold (you can do this up to 3 days in advance).

To make the caramel sauce, pour the cream into a medium saucepan. Using a small knife, split the vanilla bean, scrape out its seeds, and pulp and add them to the saucepan. Heat the cream over high heat until it just begins to boil, then turn off the heat and add the butter, stirring until it melts.

Combine the sugar, corn syrup and 1/4 cup water in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat. Cook without stirring, swirling for even cooking, until the sugar becomes a medium amber color, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, and gradually add the cream mixture, whisking constantly to combine, and stir until it comes together. This also can be made in advance and reheated before serving if needed.

If caramel sauce has hardened when you're ready to serve, gently heat until it loosens. Spoon a tablespoon of sauce on top of each budino, top with a pinch of coarse salt and a big dollop of whipped cream.

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Recipe: Butterscotch Breadcrumb Cake

This cake comes from Matthew Busetto at Portland, Ore.'s Firehouse Restaurant. Breadcrumb cakes are traditional in European cuisine (as well as a great way to use the restaurant's leftover Pugliese loaves). The dessert has a rich-yet-not-too-sweet flavor from the butterscotch, as well as a slightly nubby texture — both of which are perfectly matched by some whipped cream, crunchy topping and another puddle of butterscotch sauce. You can use any butterscotch sauce recipe you favor — we went with a version riffed from The Perfect Cake: 150 Cakes for Every Taste and Occasion by Susan Purdy (Broadway, 2002).

Makes 6 servings

Butterscotch Sauce

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1 cup packed dark brown sugar

1 cup cream

1 teaspoon coarse salt (or to taste)

2 to 3 teaspoons vanilla extract

Cake

3 large eggs, separated

1 cup butterscotch sauce (reserve the rest for serving)

1 teaspoon coarse salt

1 teaspoon orange zest

1 1/4 cup dry bread crumbs, fairly fine (panko will work in a pinch)

Unsweetened whipped cream, reserved butterscotch sauce and chopped nuts or toffee bits (for topping)

To make the butterscotch sauce, melt the butter in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the sugar, cream and salt and whisk until well blended. Bring to a gentle boil and cook for about 5 minutes, whisking occasionally. Remove from heat and add the smaller amount of vanilla, taste and add more as needed. Set aside.

For the cake, preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Butter an 8-inch square pan or six 6- to 8-ounce ramekins, and dust lightly with sugar. Set aside.

Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and set aside

Whip the egg yolks with the 1 cup of butterscotch sauce, salt and orange zest, until pale and almost doubled in size (a few minutes). Fold the whites into the yolk mixture in thirds, until just combined, then gently fold in the breadcrumbs.

Bake until the cake seems set and a tester comes out clean, 15 to 20 minutes for ramekins, 25 to 30 minutes for a full cake. Cool slightly in the pan, then turn out.

Serve topped with whipped cream, reserved butterscotch sauce and any other crunchy toppings you desire.

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Recipe: Butterscotch Cream Pie

Three Babes Bakeshop makes some amazing pies with local California produce. But when the staff are waiting on the harvest, they turn toward pantry favorites such as butterscotch. Lenore Estrada, one of the "babes," came up with this recipe in honor of her late mother, who loved butterscotch candy. Between the flaky crust, creamy filling and crunchy toppings, this pie is pure comfort.

Makes 1 pie

1 stick butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

2 cups cream, divided

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon bourbon, brandy or calvados

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 pie crust, parbaked and cooled

Cream or an egg wash

Sugar and salt for the crust

Whipped cream (1 cup cold cream whipped with 2 teaspoons powdered sugar and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract)

Chopped toffee, candied nuts or whatever other crunchy toppings you fancy

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt butter in a medium, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the sugar, 1 cup of the cream and salt, and whisk until well blended. Bring to a gentle boil and cook for about 5 minutes, whisking occasionally. Remove from heat and add the vanilla extract and booze of choice. Allow to cool.

Transfer the cooled mixture to a standup mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. With the mixer running, add the eggs one at a time. Add the remaining 1 cup cream. Make sure to wipe down the sides of the bowl as you go so that everything is evenly incorporated.

Pour the custard into the parbaked pie shell and, with a pastry brush, brush cream or an egg wash on the edges of the fluted pie crust that is exposed. Sprinkle liberally with coarse sugar and a pinch of coarse salt. Bake until pie is just set but center is still slightly wobbly, about 50 minutes. Transfer dish to a wire rack, and let cool completely.

When cool, spread the pie with the whipped cream, and sprinkle with a topping of your choice. Enjoy at once or refrigerate to keep it up to 2 days.

Get recipes for Butterscotch Budino With Caramel Sauce And Salt, Butterscotch Breadcrumb Cake and Butterscotch Cream Pie.

About The Author

Deena Prichep is a Portland, Ore.-based freelance print and radio journalist. Her stories have appeared on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Marketplace, The Splendid Table, Voice of America, The World and Northwest News Network, and in The Oregonian, Vegetarian Times and Portland Monthly. She chronicles her cooking experiments at Mostly Foodstuffs.

Why Apple (And Lots Of Other Companies) Wound Up In Ireland

Apple was criticized in a Senate hearing Tuesday for using a complex accounting to minimize the corporate taxes it pays. One key piece of the company's tax strategy: It funnels lots of its profits through subsidiaries in Ireland.

Offering low corporate tax rates has been a fundamental part of Ireland's economic strategy for decades — a way to get foreign companies to set up operations in the country.

In yesterday's Senate hearing, Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned that Apple has had a subsidiary in Ireland since 1980, when the country was recruiting international tech companies and offering tax deals.

As it happens, the idea of using taxes to lure foreign companies goes back even further than tha, according to Frank Barry, an Irish economist who's studied the country's tax history.

After the war, the Irish government used rebuilding funds provided by the U.S. government to, among other things, hire U.S. consultants, Barry says. The consultants produced a 100-page report that was a broad look at the Irish economy. (First line: "In the Irish economy, cattle is king.")

On one page, the report noted that Puerto Rico — another small island economy — had done well by lowering its corporate tax rate, which attracted multinational corporations.

"The U.S. consultants downplayed it," Barry says. "But our bureaucrats here spotted it and said, 'This has the makings of a very good idea.'"

Get recipes for Butterscotch Budino With Caramel Sauce And Salt, Butterscotch Breadcrumb Cake and Butterscotch Cream Pie.

About The Author

Deena Prichep is a Portland, Ore.-based freelance print and radio journalist. Her stories have appeared on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Marketplace, The Splendid Table, Voice of America, The World and Northwest News Network, and in The Oregonian, Vegetarian Times and Portland Monthly. She chronicles her cooking experiments at Mostly Foodstuffs.

West Bank Businesses Seek Growth Amid Uncertainty

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry heads back to Israel and the West Bank Thursday for more talks on restarting peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. When he was there last month, he walked away with at least one agreement - to improve the West Bank economy. Here's how he put it as he left Israel:

"We agreed among us - President Abbas, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and ourselves - that we are going to engage in new efforts, very specific efforts, to promote economic development and to remove some of the bottlenecks and barriers that exist with respect to commerce in the West Bank, to move very rapidly towards increased business expansion and private sector investment in the West Bank."

This wasn't designed to replace the political track, Kerry emphasized, but complement it.

No more details have been publicized. But if Kerry really can succeed in removing "bottlenecks and barriers," some businesspeople in the West Bank say that might go further than cash.

Take stone-cutting. So-called Jerusalem stone is famous around the world. Both Israeli and Palestinian companies extract and export it. But West Bank quarries are in an area where Israel, as agreed in the Olso Accords, controls permits for any activity on the land.

Ahmed Thwabta, who owns a stone factory in Beit Fajar, by Bethlehem, says sometimes Israeli soldiers confiscate his workers' tools. Sometimes they deny access to the mine.

"We work according to the Israeli mood," he says. "If the political situation is good, then we are OK. If the political situation is bad, then they come and pick on us and fine us."

That unpredictability hampers all kinds of businesses. Farmers wanting to sell their produce in Jerusalem can't always be sure a crossing will be open in time to keep strawberries, for example, from spoiling. Shoemakers can't guarantee shipments. Even the small-but-growing IT sector faces obstacles.

"For example, Palestine cannot have 3G or 4G because the Israeli authorities are preventing them from accessing these frequencies," says Saed Nashef, a Palestinian-American venture capitalist running a fund with nearly $30 million to invest in Palestinian tech companies.

He also says Israel could make it much easier for people from abroad to come work here.

"It's difficult to bring an expert or senior-level manager to hire in a startup," he said.

Israel emphasizes any obstacles it puts in place are for security.

"I know that the crossing point are an obstacle," says Col. Grisha Yakubovich, the head of the Civil Coordination Department of COGAT - the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories.

COGAT oversees a lot - including mining permits, commercial crossings, and travel permits for Palestinian workers seeking employment in Israel or in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Yakubovich repeats two points frequently: First, that Israel puts security first. He mentions a 2004 attack on an Israeli port after two suicide bombers hid in a commercial container to leave the West Bank. Second, that COGAT is working to support the Palestinian Authority. Yakubovich says Israel can't find takers to fill the all the permits allowed for Palestinians to work in Israel.

Given logistical obstacles, high unemployment and no clear light at the end of the political tunnel, the International Monetary Fund is predicting that growth in Palestinian areas will drop by half over the next three years. The head of the IMF office here, Udo Kock, says another major problem is that the Palestinian Authority depends on international donors for a quarter of its budget. Recently, those contributions have been inconsistent, which means the PA can't pay its bills.

"There are three main elements that are needed to get the private sector going," Kock says. "One is a relaxation of restrictions - broad based, all sectors. This is very important. Second is for donors to continue to provide assistance, and to do it in a predictable way. And there is a responsibility on the Palestinian side of course. The PA has to start working on reforms."

Rami El-Zogheir says all he needs are assurances that the political situation will at least stay the same, if not improve. His company makes high-end shoes by hand and business has been booming; during the past three years of relative calm here Golf & Horse Footwear has tripled the number of pairs it makes.

"I would like to invest more money," Zogheir says. "And I have a good chance to expand into other Arab markets. But I can't guarantee the situation here."

Get recipes for Butterscotch Budino With Caramel Sauce And Salt, Butterscotch Breadcrumb Cake and Butterscotch Cream Pie.

About The Author

Deena Prichep is a Portland, Ore.-based freelance print and radio journalist. Her stories have appeared on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Marketplace, The Splendid Table, Voice of America, The World and Northwest News Network, and in The Oregonian, Vegetarian Times and Portland Monthly. She chronicles her cooking experiments at Mostly Foodstuffs.

Quantum Or Not, New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else

It's exactly the sort of futuristic thinking you'd expect from Google and NASA: Late last week, the organizations announced a partnership to build a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA's Ames Research Center.

But questions surround the new type of computer at the lab's core. D-Wave systems, the company that makes the machine, says it is a quantum computer — a machine that runs on the strange laws of quantum mechanics. But although the computer can solve a certain type of problem much faster than conventional computers, critics say that the company's claims are not supported by scientific evidence.

"It's not exactly science, what they're doing," says Christopher Monroe, a physicist with the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. "It's high-level engineering, and I think it's high-level salesmanship, too."

The quantum computer is a giant black box, or more precisely, a black cube approximately 10 feet on a side. Inside is a refrigeration system that chills the guts to near absolute zero, and shields the workings to protect them from external radiation.

In this rarefied environment, the laws of quantum mechanics can come into effect. These quantum rules are pretty strange. Particles can be in two opposite states at once, and they can be intrinsically tied together through a process known as "entanglement." For example, two quantum coins could be in a state of heads and tails simultaneously, as though they were flipping through the air. If the two coins were entangled, reading "heads" on one after the flip would instantly tell you that the other was heads — even if it were on the other side of the galaxy.

The D-Wave Two computer has 512 quantum "bits," or units of information, in its supercooled central processor that can be entangled together, according to the company. The entanglement allows the computer to do things that a conventional computer can't. In particular, it's good at choosing between many different solutions to a problem, according to Geordie Rose, D-Wave's chief technology officer.

Here's (roughly) how it works: Just like quantum coins, the quantum bits exist in two states at once, and because they are entangled, that means the entire chip is simultaneously in many different configurations of "heads and tails." The quantum computer, in a sense, simultaneously tries every answer imaginable before settling on an efficient one. Running the computer just a few times will give a subset of highly efficient solutions. By contrast, a conventional computer would have to individually test millions or billions of solutions to find the right answer.

Rose says that the new machine won't always be better than a regular computer, but for machine learning and searching — activities both Google and NASA are interested in — the D-wave's computer could be far more effective.

"The best answer, or the highest or the lowest or the smallest or the meatiest ... no matter what," Rose says. "If it's got an '-iest' at the end and you can write down a mathematical equation for what you mean about that, then you can attack it with one of our machines."

But proving exactly what D-Wave's computer does is tricky. Quantum states are highly sensitive to outside intrusion. The very act of trying to measure entanglement can easily destroy it.

There is solid evidence that the D-Wave machine is unusual. New research by computer scientist Catherine McGeoch at Amherst College suggests it can solve one particular kind of problem thousands of times faster than a regular computer. But McGeoch adds that the D-Wave Two was not measurably faster at solving two other types of problems tested.

And work from the lab of John Martinis, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, also seems to hint at quantum processes at work inside D-Wave's previous generation of quantum chip, the D-Wave One.

But Monroe remains skeptical. He believes that the D-Wave team has never demonstrated that entanglement is happening on the chips in its machine. He believes that D-Wave's supposedly quantum bits are actually working instead as tiny electromagnets. Those magnets, Monroe believes, could be interacting in ways to solve a certain problem very quickly without quantum mechanics. "There's no evidence that what they're doing has anything to do with quantum mechanics," he says. If he's right, then D-Wave's machine may be far more narrow in its abilities than the company believes.

D-Wave's Geordie Rose acknowledges the criticism, but says he believes that D-Wave's machine ultimately will also prove faster than conventional computers at solving the problems facing companies like Google, NASA and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin (which has also purchased a machine).

"What we do is build computers," Rose says, "and if we can build the fastest computers the world has ever known, you can call them whatever you like, and I'll be happy."

Get recipes for Butterscotch Budino With Caramel Sauce And Salt, Butterscotch Breadcrumb Cake and Butterscotch Cream Pie.

About The Author

Deena Prichep is a Portland, Ore.-based freelance print and radio journalist. Her stories have appeared on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Marketplace, The Splendid Table, Voice of America, The World and Northwest News Network, and in The Oregonian, Vegetarian Times and Portland Monthly. She chronicles her cooking experiments at Mostly Foodstuffs.

Instead Of Snoozing In Savings, Let's Put $5,000 To Work

If you have a savings account you probably already know this: Your money there is losing value to inflation. Yields are so low that returns are not even keeping up with the cost of living.

I've been watching some of my own savings dwindle. And that prompted me to take up a challenge: I'm taking $5,000 from personal savings and putting it to work. I'm not a financial whiz, pundit or any kind of guru.

In the coming weeks, I'll be reporting on the various investments I decide to pursue. Along the way, I hope to provide some useful information about avoiding high fees in mutual funds, bulk buying at discount stores as a hedge against inflation and staking a claim in real estate for just a few hundred dollars. We'll keep a scorecard of my investments and track how they perform over time.

But back to those paltry returns from savings. Jacob Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics says it's an "absolutely miserable" time to be a saver and has been ever since the financial crisis began.

It's a freakish situation last experienced during the Great Depression. "We haven't seen a sustained period where interest rates have been this negative for this long. This is a truly unprecedented situation," Kirkegaard says.

When Kirkegaard says "this negative," here's what he means: The average yield, or interest rate, on a savings account at a major bank is 0.1 percent, according to Bankrate.com. Inflation is running at 1.7 percent. Do the math there. It's a lousy deal for savers.

For more than four years, the Federal Reserve has tried to revive the economy by getting credit flowing more energetically. In pursuit of that goal, the Fed has kept interest rates at nearly zero percent.

That's why yields are so skimpy on savings accounts. "So you can say that savers and the return that savers earn on their money is kind of a collateral damage in the crisis management conducted by the Federal Reserve and other central banks," Kirkegaard says.

My wife and I have a kid in college and a mortgage, I put money into my retirement plan and anything left over goes into family savings. And, yes, it's kind of frustrating to see that money chipped away by inflation. It's far worse for someone on a fixed income who pays for food, rent and medical expenses out of savings.

So how about that $5,000? I stopped in to see Nessa Feddis, a senior vice president at the American Bankers Association. I asked her to make the best case for the savings account. "Bank accounts are FDIC insured," she says. "That means that no matter what happens to the institution if the bank fails, no matter what happens to the economy, the customer's money is safe, up to $250,000."

What else?

"There's a convenience to having a savings account in the same institution where the customer's checking account is," Feddis says.

Convenience and FDIC guarantees are fine. But with the Fed expected to keep record low rates for a while longer, there's not much hope those savings will grow. So I'm setting that cash loose into the world of risk and reward. The investments could lose value. But they could also come out ahead, which is something that can't be said — for now — for the money I have parked in savings.

Get recipes for Butterscotch Budino With Caramel Sauce And Salt, Butterscotch Breadcrumb Cake and Butterscotch Cream Pie.

About The Author

Deena Prichep is a Portland, Ore.-based freelance print and radio journalist. Her stories have appeared on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Marketplace, The Splendid Table, Voice of America, The World and Northwest News Network, and in The Oregonian, Vegetarian Times and Portland Monthly. She chronicles her cooking experiments at Mostly Foodstuffs.