Salted Butterscotch & Pecan No-Bakes

Easter Sunday fell on April 12th and we did not go to MawMaw Shirley's, which was the first Easter in my memory we had not spent together. We called her in the morning — a video call, which she had learned to do on her tablet at Daddy's insistence and which she handled with careful dignity, always addressing the camera by slightly talking past it. She had made herself a small Easter meal: a piece of ham, rice dressing, sweet potato casserole. She said she was fine. She looked fine. She was also clearly doing what she does when she is managing something difficult, which is to present as being fine with such thoroughness that only people who know her well can see the effort underneath.

I made a full Easter meal at home: ham, all the sides, my sweet potato pie. We set the table as if for the whole family and ate in the good dishes that came out only for holidays. Daddy said grace with more length than usual. Mama bowed her head and I watched the muscles in her face and thought about what she was carrying that week professionally — the things she came home not saying. After grace we ate and it was good and warm and real, even in the confined space of just the three of us, and afterward we called MawMaw again and I held my sweet potato pie up to the camera and she laughed a real laugh.

I had been keeping a journal with more regularity since lockdown — not just the recipe notes but actual writing, daily, about what I was observing and thinking and feeling. The sourdough. The MawMaw calls. The sound of the neighborhood. Mama's tired face coming through the door. I wrote everything. Writing was the thing alongside cooking that kept me from dissolving into the ambient anxiety. They worked the same way: you took the raw material of what was happening and transformed it into something you could hold. That is what I was learning. That is maybe what I have always been learning.

That Easter taught me that the table you set — even a small one, even on a screen — is still a table. MawMaw’s laugh when she saw my pie through the camera was real, and that realness is what I’ve been trying to cook toward ever since. These Salted Butterscotch & Pecan No-Bakes are the kind of thing I reach for when I want that same combination: something warm and sweet and a little unexpected, made without a lot of fuss, because sometimes the simplest thing you put on a plate is the one that travels farthest.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 5 min | Total Time: 15 min (plus 30 min setting) | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

1 cup butterscotch chips
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup whole milk
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup chopped pecans, lightly toasted
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon flaky sea salt, plus more for topping

Instructions

Prep your surface. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside. Have a tablespoon cookie scoop ready.
Melt the base. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine the butterscotch chips, peanut butter, butter, and milk. Stir constantly until fully melted and smooth, about 3—4 minutes. Do not let the mixture boil.
Remove from heat. Take the pan off the burner and stir in the vanilla extract and 3/4 teaspoon flaky sea salt.
Fold in oats and pecans. Add the rolled oats and chopped pecans and stir until everything is evenly coated. Work quickly — the mixture will begin to set as it cools.
Scoop and set. Drop rounded tablespoons of the mixture onto the prepared baking sheets. Lightly press each mound and finish with a pinch of flaky salt on top.
Cool completely. Let the cookies sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes until firm. Transfer to an airtight container. They will keep for up to one week — though they rarely last that long.

Nutrition (per serving)

Salted Butterscotch & Pecan No-Bakes — The Sweet That Made MawMaw Laugh