Before we discuss today’s candy excursion, a confession: I have yet to bake a single thing this holiday season. Oh, my spirit has been willing, but the time has been so crunched! And you know what? That’s perfectly OK. Sweets are good any time of the season, and if friends and neighbors don’t get their deliveries till after Dec. 25, we’ll call them New Year’s candies and move right on along. I haven’t had a recipient yet who refused my baked goods due to a date on the calendar.
I started a love affair with these candies nearly four decades ago and can’t remember a holiday season without them. Some of my first Christmas memories involve me standing on a kitchen chair so I could see over the counter, watching my mother mix the fixings for butterscotch candies on the stove, then carefully spooning them out onto aluminum foil to cool. Her original recipe had a chocolate-butterscotch blend, but when I developed cocoa-induced migraines in college (a travesty, that!), I moved the party to a butterscotch-only recipe instead. My cocoa-fueled migraines have abated at this point in my life, but I like the butterscotch-forward recipe so much that I’ve kept it!
While this recipe didn’t start as a plant-based concoction, I’ve taken the liberty of making it one. Dairy-free butterscotch chips are easy to find now both in specialty shops and on Amazon (I like the King David brand for meltability), and the rest of the ingredients are naturally vegan, so it’s just not all that difficult to do. And if you want to add a bag of chocolate chips back in, be my guest! We’re all for variety here. :)
The recipe’s below.
PrintVegan Butterscotch Candies.
A holiday treat that will make friends everywhere you go!
Ingredients
2 bags of butterscotch chips (or one bag of butterscotch chips and one bag of chocolate chips)
1 5-ounce container of chow mein noodles
8 ounces unsalted roasted peanuts
Instructions
Before you get started, line a countertop or table with aluminum foil. This will be important later.
Pour the chips into a large pot and turn the heat to Medium, stirring constantly. Once the chips have completely melted, add the noodles and peanuts and continue to mix until everything is well coated with butterscotch (or butterscotch/chocolate).
Working as swiftly (and smoothly!) as you can, spoon out the mixture one spoonful at a time onto the foil until you’re out of melted butterscotch, at which point you can feel free to lick the spoon and the remnants in the pot. Let the candies cool for several hours, store in an airtight container and give out to all your friends and family!
:)