- Hey, I'm John Cannell.
And today on Preppy Kitchen
we're making rich and decadent millionaires shortbread.
So let's get started!
First off, I'm setting my oven to 350
and lining a 9 by 9 inch baking pan with parchment paper.
(lighthearted music)
Right, now we're gonna make our shortbread base.
This is the most decadent delicious dessert.
We're starting off with one cup or 226 grams
of room temperature, unsalted butter.
In case you're wondering why is this called shortbread?
Here's the deal, short refers to the texture of this.
It's like a cookie.
So it's crumbly and like, melts in your mouth.
That's a short texture, long texture would be like bread,
or like stretchy and stretch it out to long.
Ah!
But this clearly isn't bread.
So like, what's the deal?
Shortbread's a Scottish invention.
Scots are not known for putting up with nonsense
and that nonsense includes taxes on cookies.
There was a tax on cookies and Scottish bakers were like
we're not gonna pay that tax.
This is not cool.
So, they named it bread to try to get around the tax,
even though it's totally a cookie.
So it's called shortbread.
I love that history.
All right, I creamed my butter up really quickly.
Now I want 50 grams or 1/2 a cup of granulated sugar.
Shortbread is such a treat to eat
and millionaire's shortbread is even better.
It's like the most decadent thing possible.
You have a layer of crumbly, melt in your mouth,
buttery shortbread, topped with a caramel,
crowned with chocolate.
All right we want to get this sugar
really well incorporated.
So, mix it in.
This looks fairly light and fluffy.
I'm not gonna go crazy though.
Now we're gonna add one egg yolk.
Whenever you add an egg yolk into a cookie
it's gonna give you a little bit of richness and structure.
So we're strengthening our shortbread a bit.
I'm also gonna add...
What am I doing?
I'm also gonna add half a teaspoon of salt.
In you go.
As well as one teaspoon of a nice vanilla.
Now let's mix this up.
Always a good idea to scrape the bowl down.
Shortbreads have a long and storied history,
plain, delicious, but people have always thought,
"Hmm, what could I add to this?"
Could it be like candied peel or nuts?
Anything else, there's so many add-ons.
And I think this culminated with adding on, the caramel,
and the chocolate, to create this decadent confection.
Now we're gonna add the flour.
I'm gonna say hello to my scale.
I want two cups or 240 grams.
I'm gonna add this in a couple additions,
just so it gets worked in.
Just get that worked in a little bit.
I'm gonna add the rest now.
Using a scale is a great way to get accurate measurements
so you can have perfect baked goods every single time.
So many issues happen when people just add a little bit
too much flour or other ingredients.
And it's often because of mismeasurements,
measuring cups are not the best.
That's definitely on my top tips list.
Seems a little bit crazy but I'm actually going to
finish this off with my spatula.
So get all of this butter off of your...
Get all the butter off of your beaters.
And we're gonna finish this off by hand.
Shortbread should have a crumbly, like,
melt in your mouth buttery texture,
but if you overmix it, it can become a little bit tough
and not as pleasant.
We want these to be the best.
The technique I like for shortbread
is to smoosh it in with my spatula.
So smoosh that flour and butter together.
Very similar to a pastry dough, it'll come together
and be ready to press.
That's perfect.
(upbeat music)
The name actually comes from somewhere
in the mid 20th century.
First references come in Australia,
and this dessert has just become popular worldwide.
Everybody loves the combination of shortbread,
caramel and chocolate together in an easy to make dessert.
I'm gonna place this into my 9 by 9 inch prepared pan.
I just wanna like a nice flat even layer,
so you can kind of crumble it all over,
and then press it into place.
Perfect! (laughs)
No, we're gonna do some patting now.
Oh my gosh, the smell of the butter, sugar and vanilla
is just the best.
These are called millionaire shortbread because they're like
shortbread for like extravagant delicious times.
They're also called caramel slice, caramel squares,
millionaire's slice.
The list goes on.
You can let me know in the comments
if there's a name that I'm missing out on.
I bet that millionaire's slice is Australian,
because Australia has the delicious custard slice,
which is something that maybe should go on the channel.
Our base looks just about perfect.
We're gonna pop this into the oven, 350 for about 22 minutes
or until the edges are nice and golden.
In the meantime, we can make our caramel.
Our caramel layer is one of the easiest things possible.
If you are intimidated by making caramel
this is like a caramel hack for you.
So start off with 1/2 of a cup of butter.
That's 113 grams.
Could be room temperature or a little cold doesn't matter.
One cup of light brown sugar, it's about 210 grams.
Plop.
1/2 a teaspoon of salt.
In you go, this gives us some contrast.
If you're using fine salt, use a little bit less.
I'm also adding one of my favorite things to eat
straight out of the can, sweetened condensed milk.
If you're wondering why we're using
sweetened condensed milk in our caramel,
adding it to the caramel helps it to thicken up much faster.
Caramel has milk, sugar, and butter.
This is the milk and sugar in a thickened state.
So you're adding some ingredients
that are already the right consistency.
When you use a water for caramel, oh my gosh,
you have to cook almost all of the water off.
So you use like a lot of baking time
or a lot of cooking time for the caramel.
And in doing that, it's much more easy to burn it,
or it could be crystallizing.
A lot of stuff can happen.
So this is just an easy shortcut
and it makes it that much more delicious.
Oh my gosh, this in your coffee in the morning,
you let me know how good that is.
It is delicious.
I feel like I should do a YouTube video
where we just drink coffee together.
We just make delicious coffees the whole video.
This caramel is foolproof,
because we're adding in an inverted sugar.
So you could use golden syrup.
I couldn't find any at the store today.
So I'm using a light corn syrup instead.
You could also use dark corn syrup.
It's basically just an inverted sugar.
So it's gonna help the caramel to not crystallize
and stay nice and like silky.
In you go.
I have a little vanilla to add to this caramel,
but that's gonna go into the end.
In the meantime, we're gonna place this over medium heat.
Grab a candy thermometer or a Thermapen.
We're gonna get this nice and hot to 225.
Grab a whisk and we're gonna get to going.
You can start stirring this together right away,
but it's gonna need to heat up a little bit,
so that butter melts and it really comes together.
Mm, the most delicious soup ever.
I'm stirring my caramel until it comes together,
and it's nice and uniform.
If you don't have a thermometer,
either a candy thermometer or like a Javelin like this,
I love this tool by the way.
You don't need one, I'll show you what to look out for.
So you can just eyeball it.
But if you're eyeballing it,
keep a close eye on your caramel.
Cause it goes from perfect to burnt pretty quickly.
You'll see it become this kind of like tan taupe color.
That's not what we want.
It needs to cook more and take on more
of a beautiful caramel color.
That's one of the key signs to know it's close to 225.
And after just a couple minutes, it is 120 degrees.
These kids are excited about these treats.
Right now you can see it's pulling away from the pan.
It kind of wants to like bubble away.
That's fine, it's gonna do that.
It's not ready yet.
You might notice I'm using a narrow whisk.
It's called a French whisk
as opposed to a big balloon whisk,
it just helps me get the corner of the pot,
so nothing burns over there.
I'm also scraping the edge of my pot,
just so that I can make sure
everything is cooking uniformly.
It's so close right now, it's really bubbling up.
I just want it to be 225.
It's hanging out in the low 220s.
Here we go, it's ready.
Off heat, I'm gonna show you what this looks like up close.
You can see it's jumping out of the pan.
It's changed colors to be a bit deeper.
And that's how I know it's ready.
One teaspoon of vanilla.
In you go, just whisk that in.
My shortbread came outta the oven
just as my caramel was done.
I love it when recipes let you do two things at once.
It's hard to see with the brown paper,
but this is turning golden on the edge and it's fully set.
Carefully pour the caramel on top.
I say carefully, just because this pot is very warm.
Get it all out.
This will self level to an extent
but you can give it a little bit of a shimmy.
So grab a little knife or spatula,
and just smooth that caramel to the corners
And we can make sure there's a good even layer.
Mm. (laughs)
That's really good.
If you have a little bit of extra caramel left in the pot,
it turns into this.
It's the softest most amazing caramel chew.
You could just make the caramel from this recipe,
spread it over some parchment paper,
and then cut it up after it sets and then wrap it up.
It'll be delicious.
Oh my God, that is so good.
This goes into the fridge for about 10 minutes
or until the caramel is set.
It needs to be firm before we have the next layer on.
Towards the end of your chill time,
we're adding in 1 1/2 cups of semi sweet chocolate.
You could use chocolate chips for this
or if you wanted to, you could chop up a chocolate bar.
That is 250 grams and write that down.
Cause the blog post is missing metric.
I hate it when that happens.
I also wanna add in 1/3 of a cup of heavy cream.
That's 80 mils.
Whenever I say mils, I feel like Mary Berry,
she's a treasure.
You have two choices for this.
It can go over a pot of simmering water,
or you could just zap in the microwave,
in like short 40 to 30 second bursts, at a lower power.
I'm going microwave today.
Every few bursts, just give it a stir or two.
You can see after like 45 or 50 seconds at half power,
it's already mostly melted.
You don't want to try and melt
all the chocolate in your microwave.
That's a recipe for burnt chocolate, which nobody likes.
Give it a stir and then I'm gonna give this one more burst.
My chocolate's mostly melted right now.
Just stir it together.
And there's a lot of residual heat in here.
The chocolate starts melting at like 90 degrees.
So you don't need to get it really hot.
90 degrees seems like it's a hot number,
but you know your internal temperature is higher than that.
So it's not gonna feel very hot.
This is stirred together
and it seems like it's almost there.
I'm just gonna let this sit for a minute,
so the residual heat can finish melting
all these little dots of chocolate
I see left inside of here.
Okay,
this is just about set.
It's not completely set because there's so much heat
stored in the shortbread and the caramel.
It's not so warm that we can't pour chocolate on top
and smooth it out.
So let's do that right now.
And you can see, this is nice and silky now.
All those little nuggets of chocolate have been melted.
And by the way, you can use less chocolate,
and make a little bit less ganache.
If you find chocolate to be like a very strong flavor.
Use an offset spatula or a little knife
just to smooth this into a nice even layer.
And then we're gonna give it some swooshes
and a final flourish.
All right, so now, just to make it look pretty
we can run our spatula back and forth
for some beautiful chocolate waves.
The best kind of wave.
An optional finish for this
is a very light sprinkle of big flaked salt.
Look at these beautiful flakes of salt here.
They're gorgeous.
It'll give it a little bit of a contrast
and salted caramel vibes.
Once your shortbread's chilled, plop it out of your pan.
It's time to give it a cut,
small or giant, the pieces can be as large as you'd like.
Look at this layer.
That buttery shortbread, silky caramel
and luscious chocolate, make some magic.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.
And if you like my videos
check out my dessert bar playlist.