Properly melting butter and sugar together for butterscotch bar recipe

reno_rita

I've been trying to make butterscotch bars. I'm not a new baker, but I don't have much experience in melting brown sugar and butter together. The recipe (included at bottom of post) I'm using says that I need to melt butter and add brown sugar, and stir until sugar is melted. When I first tried it, everything went well. Butter and brown sugar were mixed as one and it kinda looked like toffee. On my next attempts, I couldn't get the same result...

Originally asked by Catzie Carpio on Stack Exchange (cooking) (CC BY-SA 3.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

In the past I have had a similar issue with making a butterscotch drink recipe. What I have found is that adding a bit of water to the melted butter (1-2 tsp/1/2 c, 5-10mL/120mL) helps dissolve the brown sugar and prevents graininess and seizing. Sugar is not readily soluble in fat, so it needs water in order to dissolve. I suspect one of three things happened: Different batches of butter may have different water contents. The brown sugar may have lost some of its moisture as it sat around in the pantry. Some of the water may have evaporated off while melting the butter. If you heat brown sugar in butter without enough water some will dissolve in the water present from the butter and the...

Full answer by Didgeridrew: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/41215 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Need it done for your business? UphillTech.