Millionaire's Shortbread

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •20cm square baking tin
• •Baking parchment
• •Heavy-bottomed saucepan
• •Wooden spoon
• •Heatproof bowl for melting chocolate
• •Sharp knife and a jug of hot water for cutting

Instructions

1. 1

   Bake the shortbread

   Heat the oven to 170C/150C fan. Line a 20cm square tin with baking parchment, leaving an overhang on two sides so you can lift the whole slab out later. Beat the soft butter and caster sugar together until pale and creamy. Add the flour and a pinch of salt and bring it together with your hands into a soft, slightly crumbly dough. Don't overwork it. Press it evenly into the lined tin, smooth the top with the back of a spoon, and prick it all over with a fork. Bake for twenty to twenty-five minutes, until it's pale gold at the edges and just firm to the touch. Set aside to cool completely in the tin.

   The base needs to be properly cool before the caramel goes on. Warm shortbread under hot caramel turns soggy. Patience now saves you regret later.
2. 2

   Start the caramel

   Put the butter, brown sugar, golden syrup, and condensed milk into a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Set it over a low heat and stir gently until the butter has melted and everything has come together into a pale, sandy liquid. Don't rush this bit. The sugar needs to dissolve completely before you turn the heat up, otherwise the caramel will be grainy.

3. 3

   Cook the caramel

   Now turn the heat up to medium and keep stirring. This is the bit that asks for patience. The mixture will bubble and foam and look stubbornly the same for a long time, and then, all at once, it starts to change. The colour deepens from pale gold to amber to a rich, dark toffee. The texture thickens. It pulls away from the bottom of the pan in slow, glossy folds and smells unmistakably of toffee, warm and buttery and faintly burnt at the edges in the best possible way. That's the moment. Take it off the heat.

   Trust your nose. It knows before you do. The line between perfect caramel and burnt caramel is about thirty seconds, and once you smell that first edge of bitterness creeping in, you've gone too far. Don't walk away from the pan.

   A wooden spoon is your friend here. It lets you feel the texture changing in a way a silicone spatula never quite does.
4. 4

   Pour and set

   Pour the hot caramel over the cooled shortbread base and tilt the tin gently to spread it into the corners. Let it cool at room temperature for an hour or so, then move the tin to the fridge for another thirty minutes until the caramel is properly set and no longer tacky to the touch. If you put the chocolate on too soon, the layers will slide around when you cut them.

5. 5

   Top with chocolate

   Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir until smooth and glossy, then take it off the heat and let it cool for a couple of minutes so it isn't piping hot when it meets the caramel. Pour it over the set caramel and tilt the tin so it spreads evenly into the corners. If you fancy, scatter a few flakes of sea salt over the top while the chocolate is still wet. The salt against the sweetness is one of those small things that turns a good square into a quietly splendid one.

   Don't refrigerate the finished slab for too long before cutting. Rock-hard chocolate cracks and splinters under the knife. Twenty minutes in the fridge is plenty.
6. 6

   Cut into squares

   Lift the whole slab out of the tin using the parchment overhang and place it on a board. Take a sharp knife, dip the blade in a jug of hot water, wipe it dry, and cut into squares or fingers, whichever you prefer. The hot knife slices cleanly through the chocolate without shattering it. Wipe the blade between cuts. Sixteen generous squares from a 20cm tin, or twenty smaller ones if you're feeding a crowd.

Chef Tips

• •Use real butter, not anything that calls itself a spread. A shortbread base is butter, sugar, and flour. There is nowhere for inferior butter to hide. Same goes for the chocolate on top. A bar that tastes of something proper makes the whole tin worth the trouble.
• •The caramel is the heart of this and it rewards your full attention. Don't answer the door, don't reach for your phone, don't trust it to look after itself. Stir constantly, watch the colour, and trust your nose when the toffee smell starts to deepen. That's when it's nearly there.
• •If the caramel goes grainy, the sugar didn't dissolve fully before you brought it up to the boil. Start again, slower this time. It's frustrating but it's the only fix.
• •Cut with a hot, dry knife for clean edges. Dip in hot water, wipe, slice, wipe, dip, repeat. It's fiddly but the squares look properly handsome at the end of it. Honestly though, ragged ones taste exactly the same.

Advance Preparation

• •The whole tin can be made up to a week ahead and kept in an airtight container at room temperature. The caramel and chocolate hold beautifully. If anything, the squares are better on the second day, once the layers have settled into each other.
• •If your kitchen is very warm, store in the fridge and bring to room temperature for half an hour before serving. Cold caramel is pleasant; room-temperature caramel is the right answer.
• •Freezes well for up to two months, wrapped tightly in parchment and then foil. Defrost at room temperature for an hour or so.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 84g)