Chocolate-butterscotch Crunchy Chow Mein Cookies (No Bake)

These no bake chocolate-butterscotch cookies take me all the way back to my scouting days.

Girl Scout Cookies

One of our first field trips as girl scouts was to the local electric company test kitchens. We learned to make these easy cookies by melting chocolate and butterscotch chips, then stirring in chow mein noodles and forming little haystacks on a sheet of waxed paper.

Chocolate-butterscotch crunchy chow mein cookies on a green ceramic serving plate.

I’ve thought often of that day and how good the cookies tasted! But I couldn’t recall the proportions and never bothered doing a web search until today.

Most of the recipes I came across differ from what I remember because they include peanuts. Peanuts are fine to add in, but I wanted my result to be authentic to my memory.

Not A Chip off the Old Block

One big issue is the quality and taste of semi-sweet chocolate chips today.

I’ve been using Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips with 60% cacao. I think these taste better and more like the semi-sweet chocolate chips of old. They make great chocolate chip cookies, too.

You may also want to consider adjusting the butterscotch to chocolate chips ratio to your taste.

Chocolate-butterscotch Crunchy Chow Mein Cookies – No Bake

Prep Time45 minutes
Cooling time6 hours
Total Time6 hours 45 minutes
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: International
Keyword: Chocolate-butterscotch cookies, Chow Mein Noodle Cookies, no bake cookies
Servings: 54 cookies
Calories: 53kcal
Author: A. JoAnn

Equipment

  • wax paper
  • Baking sheets

Ingredients

  • 1 ¾ c. butterscotch morsels
  • 1 c. chocolate chips
  • 6 ½ c. chow mein noodles (crunchy)

Instructions

  • Slightly crush chow mein noodles before opening the bag, if it looks like the noodles are long. This will make the cookies a little easier to form and eat.
  • Measure chocolate chips and butterscotch morsels into a microwave-safe large bowl.
  • At 30 second intervals, microwave on 50% power and then remove from microwave and stir to blend the chips and morsels.
  • Continue until you have a smooth melted and blended mixture.
  • Add crunchy chow mein noodles and fold gently to coat the noodles.
  • Using a tablespoon, drop cookies onto a waxed paper lined baking sheet.
    cookies set on waxed paper are easy to remove.
  • Cool in refrigerator several hours until coating has hardened.
  • Store in a covered container at room temperature.

Some Notes About These Cookies

I had a difficult time getting my cookies to harden until I refrigerated them. It was very humid when I made them. I suspect the cookies or chips were absorbing water vapor.

It is probably a good idea to make these cookies when the humidity isn’t high.

I didn’t break up my noodles before I made this batch of cookies, but after trying to form them into neat haystacks I decided I should have done that.

They also were slightly hard to eat neatly because the long noodles would break off as you bit them.

So, I added it as the first step in the recipe.

The cookies I made remind me of hairy spiders! I’m thinking that adding candy googly eyes would be “sweet” for Halloween.

Author: A. JoAnn

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