Butterscotch chips

One US cup of butterscotch chips weighs 170 grams (6 ounces). Going the other way, 100 grams is about 0.59 cups.

Baking chips compared: cup weights side by side, the source behind each, and why they differ.

A cup of butterscotch chips weighs about 170 g (6 oz), and a tablespoon about 10.6 g. USDA and America's Test Kitchen agree exactly, and they put butterscotch chips at the same weight per cup as this site's chocolate chips.

Butterscotch chips are small drops of sweet confectioner's coating, made mostly of sugar, vegetable fat and milk solids with butterscotch flavouring, sold by Hershey's, Nestlé Toll House and store brands in 11 oz bags. They are not chocolate and contain no cocoa. They go into oatmeal scotchies, blondies, bars, haystack candies and fudge, and they melt for drizzles and glazes.

USDA's record for butterscotch confectioner's coating weighs a cup of chips at 170 g. America's Test Kitchen gives butterscotch chips in three recipe lines, three quarters of a cup at 4½ oz (128 g), half a cup at 3 oz (85 g) and a quarter cup at 1½ oz (43 g), which is 6 oz, 170 to 172 g, per cup every time. The two agree exactly, well inside the 5% this site allows for chips and other crystalline solids, so this site publishes 170 g with high confidence.

The bags tell a looser story. Nestlé's Oatmeal Scotchies recipe says an 11 oz package of butterscotch morsels is 1 2/3 cups, about 187 g a cup; Hershey's 11 oz bag says 1 3/4 cups, about 178 g. At 170 g a cup an 11 oz bag holds 1.83 cups, and a recipe has to round that to a fraction a cook can measure, so both statements are listed without figures. The nutrition labels give a tablespoon as 15 g, the reference weight the FDA sets for baking candies; that figure is fixed before the spoon is chosen and would put a cup at 240 g, so it is listed without a figure too.

King Arthur Baking's chart has no butterscotch chip row; its chocolate and white chocolate chips are 170 g a cup, which matches.

The physical check: butterscotch chips are mostly sugar and fat, a solid of about 1.3 g per millilitre, shaped into small drops that touch only at their sides. Drops like these fill a little over half of a cup, which puts a level cup at 0.70 to 0.75 g per millilitre, 165 to 177 g. The measured 170 g sits right there, and it should match chocolate chips, which have the same size, shape and fat content: this site's semisweet chips weigh 168 g a cup and white chips 170 g.

Practical guidance: use 170 g per cup of butterscotch chips, 85 g per half cup and about 10.6 g per tablespoon. An 11 oz bag holds about 1 3/4 cups, so a recipe asking for 2 cups needs a little more than one bag; a 10 oz bag holds about 1 2/3 cups. When a recipe calls for a bag rather than cups, use the whole bag: that is what the recipe was tested with.