Chocolate-Butterscotch Brownies

Pudding-mix baking is one of the great tricks of mid-century home cooks. Two packages of butterscotch pudding mix do the work that a stick of butter and a cup of brown sugar would, contributing intense butterscotch flavor, plenty of moisture and the cornstarch-thickening that gives these bars their dense, chewy crumb.

These aren’t classic cocoa brownies. They’re more like blondies with a butterscotch backbone, dotted with melty pockets of semisweet chocolate chips. The chocolate is a contrast ingredient, not the main act, which is exactly how the chocolate-butterscotch combination works best.

The whisk-only instruction (no electric mixer) is deliberate. Overbeaten batter aerates the eggs and the bars rise too high in the oven, then collapse as they cool, leaving you with a dense, sunken middle.

Pro Tips

• Use cook-and-serve butterscotch pudding mix, not instant. Instant pudding contains more thickeners and gives a gluey, gummy texture.
• Beat the eggs alone first until very thick and pale. This is the only leavening these bars get besides a bit of baking powder, so the eggs need to do their job.
• Fold the chocolate chips in by hand at the end. Whisking them through breaks them up and you lose the melty pockets.
• Use a metal pan, not glass. Glass conducts heat unevenly and you’ll get a hard, dry edge while the center is still wet.
• Cool only slightly in the pan before cutting. Fully cool bars get crumbly; warm ones cut clean. Test with a knife first.

Variations

• Swap chocolate chips for butterscotch chips for a butterscotch-bomb version.
• Use chocolate pudding mix instead of butterscotch for a denser, richer chocolate brownie variation.
• Stir in ½ cup chopped pecans or toasted walnuts along with the chocolate chips for crunch.