Buttered Toffee Shot

Butterscotch schnapps and cream — DeKuyper Buttershots' 1993 launch created the category, the cooked-butter-and-caramel flavor approximating British toffee.

The Buttered Toffee Shot is a dessert shooter built on butterscotch schnapps — the caramel-and-butter-flavored sweetened spirit that became a major commercial category in American bars following the 1993 launch of DeKuyper Buttershots. Toffee — a confection produced by boiling butter and sugar together until the mixture reaches the hard crack stage (approximately 149–154°C), then cooling — has been produced in Britain since at least the early 19th century, with some sources tracing regional British toffee traditions to the early 1800s. Yorkshire toffee, Lancashire toffee, and Bonfire Toffee are among the British regional variations whose names persist in commercial confectionery production. Butterscotch schnapps approximates toffee's flavor through food-grade flavoring compounds including diacetyl (which provides the butter note) and ethyl butyrate alongside caramelized sugar flavors — a chemical shortcut to the confection's Maillard and caramelization chemistry that is more concentrated and consistent than toffee-infused spirit. DeKuyper Buttershots' commercial success from 1993 onward drove widespread adoption of butterscotch schnapps across American casual bar menus and inspired both competing products and a broad genre of butterscotch-based novelty shots and dessert cocktails that remained popular through the 2010s.