Joe Anderson Our Eat and Tweet style Millionaire’s Shortbread adds a modern twist to the traditional by using a 12 hole muffin tray and some invention. It’s quite easy, although can be a little time consuming.
The result is a cupcake shaped shortbread with a carmel filling which is then topped with chocolate. This impresses most people, given the professional look and the caramel filling surprise.
Before getting started pre-heat the oven to 180c and grease a 12 hole muffin tray with butter.
Millionaire’s Shortbread – EatandTweet Style
For the shortbread:
- 250g plain flour
- 75g caster sugar
- 175g butter, softened
Method
Making the shortbread is simple really. Just mix together the butter, flour and sugar until a dough is formed. If the mixture is crumbly then simply add a little water. Once you have a dough roll it out onto a flat, floured surface until it is around 3cm thick and find a round cutter which is slightly larger than the holes in your muffin tray. Cut out one piece of shortbread and place it into the hole. It should fit in almost like a pasty/pie shape, with a hollow middle. It’ll probably fill around half the hole, this is perfect.
Repeat until you have the shortbread mix in all 12 holes. As mentioned, there should be space in the middle of the mixture to hold your caramel, but for now you’ll need to blind bake these shortbread pasties by placing some greaseproof paper in the middle of each.
To cut the greaseproof paper you should use the same pastry cutter and simply use a sharp knife to cut out a circle of the same shape to place in the middle. Once you have done this place some baking beans on top as this will allow the shortbread to bake while keeping the shape in the middle.
Bake for around 10 minutes then remove the greaseproof paper and baking beans and then bake for another 10 minutes or until cooked in the middle.
Remove them from the muffin tin but keep that to once side. Once cooled, you should now have a shortbread pastry case which is ready to be filled with caramel.
For the caramel you could use the following (optional and more difficult option):
- 100g butter or margarine
- 100g light muscavado sugar
- 1 x 397g cans condensed milk
To make the caramel heat the butter, sugar and condensed milk into a pan until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil, stirring at all times, reduce the heat, simmer gently, while stirring continuously for around 5 minutes until the mixture thickens.
However we used:
1 x397g can of Carnations Caramel, which takes away all of the need for the above and tastes just as amazing. In all honest it only has two ingredients listed on the can, so you can’t go wrong with this really.
Once your shortbread pastry cases are cooled, place them back in the muffin tin and simply fill them with your caramel mixture, making it level with the top of the shortbread pastry case.
For the topping:
200g plain or milk chocolate, broken into pieces
This is the last and easiest step. Melt the chocolate either in the microwave for around a minute, constantly taking out every 15 seconds to stir until completely melted. You can also place the chocolate in a glass bowl on top of a pan of simmering water, again constantly stirring until the chocolate has melted.
Once you have the melted, cooled chocolate, simply spoon onto each caramel filled pastry using a table spoon of chocolate for each. Make sure to spread out the chocolate gently so that it completely covers the pastry and caramel. When you have done this for all 12, simply place in the fridge, then once the chocolate has hardened they’ll be ready to serve.
If you’d like to add some fancy touches, then you can get another bar of chocolate (white, milk or plain) and scrape a knife down the back of it. This will create some delicate chocolate curls which you can then place on top.
