Millionaire's Shortbread

Finally something very English to share with you all! Alan has been telling me about this shortbread before but I never had found a recipe until a recent cookstore trip. One day I was out with a girlfriend and we ended up in a new cookstore and she walked out with a bottle of wine and me a Leiths Baking Bible holding the magic recipe. That very day I went home to experiment. There are many steps to this recipe so that day we started to call it the dog walker shortbread since we walked Daisy a bunch while the different parts cooled before the next step in the recipe.

My first attempt was good but not great. I took my first attempt to an experienced Millionaire Shortbread taste tester on Alan's team and he gave me the low down. He also advised me that the chocolate should break Before the official taste test could start first he had to go and get a cup of coffee to go with it since no sweet dessert is ever complete without a cup of coffee in his hand. His first bite he described how the bottom shortbread was not quite crunchy enough but the caramel was perfect but it needed more chocolate so that when you bite into it the chocolate would break apart and be crumbly and yet stay together. He really liked it but it needed some work. It was all good for me so I went back to the drawing board.

Try number two I worked with a different shortbread bottom to test to see how to get it to a good consistancy. This version never worked right and the taste for the shortbread didn't come out according to plan. While making the second version I added more chocolate but still not enough so it was time for the third time.

Three times the charm and I finally nailed it!! Alan took it to work to share and got feedback that I had finally got it just right as the faces of enjoyment he said were perfect! Here is the recipe and my notes to go with it.

Millionaire's Shortbread

adapted from Leiths Baking Bible

For the Shortbread

200g/7oz butter, softened

115g/4oz caster sugar

285g/10oz plain flour

For the Filling

115g/4oz butter

115g/4oz caster sugar

2 Tablespoons golden syrup

1x400g/14oz can condensed milk

For the Topping

The book calls for 115g/40z plain chocolate...go much bigger!

Meg calls for 400g plain chocolate, I did a mixture of 70% & 80% cocoa so fairly dark.

Heat the oven to 180C or 350F. Grease a 9x13 tin.

Make the shortbread: Cream the butter in a mixing bowl, add the sugar and beat until pale and fluffy. Add the flour and bring together to form a dough.

Press the dough evenly into the prepared tin, using the back of a spoon.

Bake in the center of the oven for 20 minutes or until golden-brown. Mine took about 40 minutes until it got just right. It will vary by the oven so watch it after 20 minutes and make sure it gets cooked all the way through. Having a good crust will make a difference! Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely in the tin.

Good time to walk the dog for cooling!

Make the filling: put all the ingredients into a saucepan and heat gently to melt the butter and dissolve the sugar, stirring occasionally. Increase the heat and boil rapidly for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. There will be little brown bits when it starts to boil so don't panic, and keep stirring! take care not to touch the filling it will be very hot. Remove from heat and allow to cool for 1 minute. Pour over the cooled shortbread and allow for the filling to cool and set.

Good time for walk number 2 for the dog!

For the chocolate topping: melt the chocolate in a small, heatproof bowle set over but not touching a saucpan of gently steaming water. Spread the melted chocolate carefully over the cold, set caramel filling.
Mark into fingers and leave to set before removing from the tin. Cut into fingers only once they are cold.

Flour Power

I tend to go through a lot of flour these days. Between bread, cookies, other sweet treats or just normal cooking flour is a hot commodity in our house. The sizes of what is offered in the stores does not help either as they make it tough to keep enough on hand for long periods (a month being long). In comparison to a US size bag these ones are small to me plus if you can imagine you can go smaller! I know you are saying but Megan you are in the UK so everything is smaller but I still don't accept if for food always! The same sizing of bags is consistant for sugar but I have been lucky in that on occasion I am able to go to Costco or send Alan on his way home and get a fairly big bag at 5kg's. It is pretty funny to me that I think this is a big bag! I do have to store it outside of my cupboards as it won't fit but I will take that any day over having to keep running to the store for a tiny bag of sugar that barely will fill the recipes I have for a week.

Flour on the other hand is a different story. The big bags at the store are only 1.5kg's. After awhile every time Alan would take me to the store I was buying 4-5 of these bags to be able to last a few weeks for all the bread and testing on other recipes I am doing. It would last a bit longer when we travelled but it was funny how much flour was costing (£3-4 a small bag depending on what store/quality), not only in cost but in the factor of having to bring it home on my shoulder from the store or wait for Alan to drive me to the store for a stockpile. One day at our local market I noticed a woman purchase a very large bag from the guy we sometimes would buy flour, hot sauce and garlic from, yes a strange combo but he makes Alan's favourite hot sauce. Several weeks later I went up to him and chatted about getting big bags of flour for both bread baking and regular baking. He is a funny guy with a big heart. We speak to him every week we are there and he drives up from the Isle of Wight each week with his truck for deliveries. He really does have some good chutney's and hot sauces all made on the island. He brings the products out to the other areas and Barnes is one of his spots. We have grown rather fond of the guy and make sure to talk to him every weekend even if we don't buy anything. He assured me that my flour order would be there the following week and so I planned with Alan to drive down as there would be no way we could get it on the bus with other groceries from market. Sure enough the following week our two VERY LARGE bags of flour were ready for us 16kg's for each bag at £19 each a great deal in my book! It is awesome to say the least. I have not worried about having flour or running to the store in the past month and a half. The cool thing when we picked up the bags from him is that he told us the plain flour had just been milled the day before and was very fresh and ready to use. He is the miller for the flour!

So when my bins run a bit dry in the kitchen I had upstairs to the guest room and fill up! I have sadly no other real good dry/cool storage other than in the house. No guests for awhile otherwise they might be sleeping with flour!
Check out the picture for the size comparisons between what you can actually buy in a grocery store and this includes a big supermarket shop vs what I got at the farmers market from the local miller.