This is a story about a delicious butterscotch sauce– but in order to fully appreciate it, you need some background on the culinary exploits leading up to it…
Our story began when I came into work this week to find a large bag of peaches on the counter, up for grabs. Unfortunately these were not exactly prime peaches– they were a bit mushy, some were bruised, and they were clearly on the verge of being good only for jam (not that jam is a bad thing). I informed the office that if there were any left at the end of the day I would take them home and make something delicious out of them, and apparently people took my words to heart, because I ended up with almost the entire bag!
I decided to make a cobbler, figuring that it would easily feed a crowd, but was somewhat stymied to realize upon cutting into the peaches that they were white peaches, rather than yellow as I’d assumed. White peaches are much milder and sweeter than their yellow cousins, and I’d never actually baked with them before, usually preferring to eat them straight out of hand. Since this was definitely not an option with these particular peaches, I decided that I’d add lemon juice and go light on the sugar, and hope for the best.
Honestly, the cobbler was not a home run. I made it that evening (2 pans, there were so many peaches!) and tried a serving the next morning for breakfast; it was overwhelmingly bland and mushy. It wasn’t really something I’d want my name associated with at work, but I’d promised to bring something in. What was I to do?
I decided to add a caramel-type sauce to the top to add flavor and richness, and to disguise the mushy peaches. Unfortunately, I was almost completely out of sugar, both white and brown, so I had to literally scrape the bottom of my sugar cannisters and combine the two. I was also almost out of heavy cream, so I supplemented it with a few dollops of sour cream. Nothing like scarcity to stimulate creativity! The finished sauce was actually pretty darned good, and it did a lot to perk up the peach cobbler. I’m not going to write down the cobbler recipe– bleh– but here’s the sauce recipe, in case you ever want something rich to pour over your own (hopefully better) peach cobbler. Or vanilla ice cream. Or oatmeal. The possibilities are endless…
Butterscotch Sauce with Sour Cream
1/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
4 tbs. butter
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp. kosher salt (or to taste)
1. Mix sugars in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat over medium-high until completely melted.
2. Stir in butter until melted, and keep stirring until mostly incorporated. The melted butter will be reluctant to combine with the sugar, but try your best.
3. Add heavy cream and stir– careful, this will bubble up!
4. Lower heat to medium. Add sour cream and stir until smooth– again, this will bubble up a lot. Your sauce will instantly appear much darker in color. Add salt to taste, and cook until the mixture comes to a boil.
6. Put the bottom of the pot into an ice bath and stir until sauce thickens and cools. Pour over anything you want to be made more delicious!
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