Millionaires Shortbread

By: Pete on 19:22:00

I'm off on holiday tomorrow, so using up food in the house. I wanted to make some snacks for the journey, however I had the challenge of no eggs, and really not much else. I did a bit of checking round the kitchen, and worked out I had everything I needed for some millionaires shortbread, so long as I made some interesting substitutions;

1. Self-raising flour in the shortbread rather than plain flour
2. Only half a bar of chocolate to top it with
3. No cream

I've never really liked solid chocolate on millionaires shortbread, so decided to go a ganache instead. No cream, so instead I used the ganache technique that I used for the Opera Cake, a terrible irony when I've just put up my "Basics" ganache recipe! This was a very good example of what you can make if you deal with what's in the cupboard

The end result is actually rather nice...the ratios are a bit off, as I was using volumes from other recipes not exactly designed for millionaires shortbread. I'd tweak a few things;

1. I'd line the tin with paper...my notes for shortbread have you just grease the tin, but its very hard to get it out
2.  Slightly less shortbread, maybe slightly more toffee, though actually it was nice as it was
3. A bit more chocolate...I was limited by what was available.
4. I put the zest of a lemon in the shortbread, which lightened the flavour a bit. Orange would probably be a better choice, and a more classic match to the chocolate and toffee.

Millionaires Shortbread - Recipe

• Pre-heat oven to 160'C
• Grease and line a 20cm x 30cm tray-bake tin with baking parchment (I just greased)

Shortbread Ingredients

• 200g plain flour (I used 225g of self-raising, which made for a quite light biscuit)
• 200g butter (I used 225g)
• 90g semolina flour
• 90g caster sugar (I used granulated)
• Zest of 1 orange (I used lemon)

1) Put the flour and butter in a large mixing bowl

2) Rub the butter into the flour using your fingertips into you have a small breadcrumb mixture

3) Add the caster sugar, zest and semolina, and continue to rub in

4) Put the mixture into the prepared traybake tin, and press down into the corners. Don't pack it too solidly, or the shortbread will be very tough

5) Bake for 30-35 minutes, until golden on top

6) Remove from the oven, and leave to cool in the tin

Toffee Filling Ingredients

• 400g Condensed milk (1 tin)
• 50g butter
• 50g dark muscavado sugar

1) Put the sugar and butter in a saucepan over a low heat

2) Stir until the sugar is melted, and mixed with the butter

3) Add the condensed milk, and raise the heat to medium

4) Stir for 5-6 minutes while the mixture thickens and starts to boil

5) You want the filling fairly thick, so once it is bubbling stir for 2-3 more minutes, making sure that nothing burns

6) Pour onto the cooled biscuit base, and smooth with a spatula or palette knife.

7) Leave to cool, or pop it in the fridge

Ganache Ingredients

• 100g dark (50% chocolate)
• 60g milk
• 15g butter

1) Chop the chocolate up into small pieces, and place in a heatproof bowl

2) Put the milk in a small saucepan over a low heat

3) Stir the milk gently until just boiling (again, making sure it does not burn on the bottom of the pan)

4) Pour the milk onto the chocolate, and leave to melt the chocolate for 2-3 minutes (if you have trouble getting all the chocolate to melt, you can pop the bowl on top of the saucepan (off the heat, but it will still be warm)

5) Stir the mixture to form a smooth ganache

6) Stir in the butter until it has all melted

7) Pour and smooth the ganache over the cooled toffee, tipping the tray to get it into all the corners and edges.

8) Leave to cool until the ganache has set

9) Chop into squares/slices.