Millionaire's Shortbread – Not mine unfortunately

After being invited to a cake party, I decided I would make Millionaire Shortbread for the occasion. Let me start by saying I don’t bake very often. I like to cook, but generally I can’t be fussed with baking. It’s too specific, and too many things can go wrong.

This was a recipe I had been meaning to try for a while, and this seemed like a perfect time to try it out. Living in Scotland, I’ve had Millionaire Shortbread a few times. It’s a layer of shortbread on the bottom, then a thick later of caramel, and on top is a thin layer of hard chocolate. It really is wonderful.

Millionaire Shortbread.. kind of

I’ve only made shortbread once before, but since I was making a cake type layer, and not individual cookies, I thought this would be easier than my previous attempt at shortbread. I set the butter out hours early to soften, brought all the shortbread ingredients together, kneaded them and spread them out into the pan. Then I realized I didn’t butter the pan. It’s a good, non-stick one, but I wanted to be careful. So out came the shortbread so I could grease the pan. Done – in the oven – 25 minutes later I had a nice looking bottom layer of shortbread.

Next came the caramel layer. I melted 5oz of butter with 5oz of brown sugar, until it completely dissolved. Then I added the sweetened condensed milk, stirred it all together, and poured this mixture onto the fully cooled shortbread. Forgetting the step of bringing the brown sugar and butter to a boil.

After the caramel layer cooled longer than required, I started on the chocolate topping. I successfully melted the chocolate over my improvised double boiler, and poured it over the caramel. However, the caramel didn’t set so it just sort of oozed into the caramel in a much thicker layer than I had expected, so I ended up using far more than I planned.

Millionaire Shortbread

How did it turn out? I let it sit, tried to remove it from the tart pan with a removable bottom. I think the pictures will tell the rest of the story.

I will try this recipe again, and next time I will fully roll out the shortbread and not push it into the pan (as some recipes suggested). I will bring the sugar and butter mixture to a boil, and not use such a thick layer of caramel. And perhaps, try…try again. At least a few more times before I intend to feed it to others.

To see a website with a likely tried and tested recipe, click here.