Millionaire's Shortbread

Hey there! Happy Tuesday!

What's that? You've got a craving for chocolate, caramel AND cookies? 

You can't choose? Why would you, when there is such a wonderful thing as millionaire's shortbread?

A famous writer once wrote: 

"Everything in moderation, including moderation"- Oscar Wilde. 

And that is exactly what you should keep in mind when making and eating these delicious treats. You will have bowls that are covered with sticky caramel and melted chocolate that are impossible to get out, so you will feel the strong urge to clean everything with your finger and your tongue. I wouldn't discourage that, but do it in moderation, because you will be to nauseous to even try the shortbread when it's done! 

I made this last thursday with the 'Boyfriend', and he had a jar full of good quality salted caramel from a foody type of birchbox. We just baked the shortbread, spread the caramel on top when it was cooled down and added the chocolate. The recipe does not call for this but I did have some gluten-free flour lying around and we thought it would make the shortbread more crisp and flaky while at the same time we would limit the amount of gluten in the cookie, which for some people is a good thing! 

The result looks like this, and the ingredient list and recipe you can find below! 

Tiny treats, great for sharing (or not)

Millionaire's Shortbread

1 tin of condensed milk

150g of flour

100g of gluten-free flour

75g of white muscavado sugar 

300 g of flour

125g of sugar

200g of pure chocolate

Start with the caramel, I didn't make this myself but this recipe for caramel is fairly widespread so I think we can assume it will lead to the same kind of result! Of course if you can find a good quality caramel in your shop, you can totally go for that instead.

If you're making the caramel, put the tin of condensed milk covered in a pan with boiling water with a lid on top and boil it on low heat for three hours. Check every now and then whether the water level is still high enough, the tin should be totally covered! After three hours take it out of the pan and let it cool down for 30 minutes. Then melt 125g of the butter in a pan and add the sugar and let everything melt together. Add the caramelized condensed milk and let it warm up for 5 minutes. You can also add some sea salt to make it a salted caramel, the jar I used did have salt and the result was awesome!

Heat up the oven to 180 degrees C. Crumb the two types of flour and the rest of the butter (175g) together and add the white muscavado sugar. Kneed the crumbs together to a dough and press it down in your square baking pan lined with baking paper. With a fork make some little holes in the dough and bake it for 30 minutes in the middle of the oven until it's nice and brown and done. Let the shortbread cool down completely. 

On top of the cooled down shortbread spread your caramel and let it set for a little while. I put it in the freezer so it would set a bit faster and if you do that it only takes 10 minutes to set. While it's in the freezer, melt your chocolate au-bain-marie, and then spread the chocolate on top of the caramel. We also added some sea-salt flakes on top of the chocolate to give it an extra kick! Put it back in the freezer for 10 minutes and then you can take it out. 

Take the Millionaire's Shortbread out of the baking tin and cut it into small pieces. Again, everything in moderation, including moderation. That goes best if you cut it into small pieces, so you don't end up eating half the thing in half an hour and getting completely sick with all of that chocolate and caramel. 

So... good luck with that. I can't stop eating those things, it was a good thing I wasn't at home this weekend otherwise I would have eaten even more... But then again, I had more than enough treats this weekend, I was at my parents place I had so much good food once again! At least now I have some more little treats to get myself through the week haha! 

I'd love to hear your comments, whether you've tried to make them or any other recipe's for me to try! So do let me know how you get on! You can contact me through facebook, twitter, instagram or in the old fashioned way, through the comments below this post! 

Lots of love,

Floor

Cheer up recipe: Scones

Happy monday everyone!

Have you survived your weekend? Did you manage to drag your but out of bed this morning? I know I had some issues this morning... I still had to do all these boring house chores and find time to finish writing a paper, so very boring...

But I have the best way to help you cheer up! It takes you half an hour in total and you instantly feel a lot better! Have one of these scones in the afternoon with some tea and take some time to feel proud of all those boring things you ticked off your to-do list! (On top of that, the amount of sugar and butter that goes into these delights is, if you ask me, very limited, so you don't have to feel guilty for having a treat). If you don't get the monday blues you could also bake these scones for a friend, it's always nice to help someone else feel better ;).

I made these with one of my best friends a little while ago when we had our own little tea-party. We don't get to see each other very often so we always need a lot of time to catch up when we do, so I made these scones and she made some lovely sandwiches! A couple of days later I saw a video of Fleur de Force who had filmed the making of her own tea-party with one of her friends, such a funny coincidence! You can watch the video below if you'd like :). But she made fairy cakes and I really prefer scones :) (or maybe she doesn't have a good recipe for scones... Maybe I should send her this link haha...). Anyway, it is a good thing to make for yourself, but even better to share with friends, as goes for all baking I guess!

Buttermilk Scones

makes: 10 scones

450 g of selfraising flour

1/4 tsp of salt

100g of cold diced butter

85g of sugar

284ml of buttermilk (Dutch: Karnemelk)

2 tsp of vanilla extract

a splash of milk or a beaten egg

I've tried a number of different recipes but I discovered this one recently and it is definitely the easiest one I've come across and (if you have all of the right ingredients) it is a real no-brainer!

Start with pre-heating your oven to 200 degrees Celcius.

Add the diced butter to your self-raising flour, make sure it is self-raising, I forgot to do this last night and my first batch was a total failure haha. In case you don't have self-raising flour you could just take normal flour and add 1 tsp of baking powder for every 100 g of flour. 

Add the butter to the self-raising flour

Using only the tips of your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until you get a sandy texture. It is important to only use the tips of your fingers because that will ensure that you don't melt the butter with the warmth of your hands. If you've done it right the mixture should a little bit like this: 

Butter and flour mixed together

Now add in the sugar and the salt and mix it a bit more with your finger tips. After doing this take a cup and mix the vanilla extract with the buttermilk. Put the cup in the microwave for half a minute on medium heat, you don't want it to become 'hot' but you slightly want to heat it up. 

Vanilla + buttermilk

Now take a separate bowl and add a bit of the flour mixture to the bowl, add a bit of the vanilla and buttermilk and mix it together either with your hands or with a spoon. Keep repeating the process until everything is more or less mixed together. 

Mix the wet and the dry ingredients together

Make sure you don't over mix it! So when everything is almost combined, turn the bowl over on a clean work-surface dusted with some flour and slowly use your hands to really bring everything together (you want to use all of those ingredients, don't leave anything behind!). 

Finish it off with a bit of kneading to make a dough

You now want to flatten the dough a bit, it should look like a really thick cookie, about two fingers high. Then use a round cookie cutter or a small glass to cut out little rounds. 

Put the rounds on a baking tray lined with baking paper and glaze the scones with some beaten egg or some milk to give them a nice brown color. If you have the feeling your dough is not really cohesive and it is a bit flaky, don't worry, you've done well! 

Put a bit of milk or egg on top of the scones

Bake the scones for about 15 minutes or until you feel satisfied with the way they look, some ovens work a bit different than others :). This is the way they should look when you take them out of the oven:

Nice golden brown little scones

They're best when they are still warm and with a bit of clotted cream and jam or lemon curd! In the first picture you see I also have dried apricots lined up, and that is what I sometimes like to do: add some raisins, some dried diced apricots, maybe some lemon peel and poppy seeds... whatever you like! But this is a really good basic recipe, at least: it's the best one I've tried! 

So give it a go and let me know how they turned out! Or some other suggestions you have for added flavourings for scones, or what you like to eat your scones with (a cup of coffee, cup of tea?). And do you have any other way to cheer yourself or your friends up? Let me know! You can send me a facebook message, a tweet, an instagram, or a comment, whatever you like :) 

xxxx 

Floor