Millionaire’s Shortbread Is 3 Layers Of Heaven | Samantha Seneviratne | NYT Cooking

My dad even sometimes puts this on rice. That's like a real desperation dessert. Like, there's nothing in the fridge and you want something sweet? Put Lasagles and syrup over rice. Hi, I'm Sam. I'm in the New York Times cooking studio, and today I'm gonna show you how to make millionaire shortbread. I like a shortbread that crumbles a little bit, that is short, so like you're not trying to develop a lot of gluten in the cookie so that it crumbles nice. I think that's what makes a shortbread the best, when it's buttery and crumbly. It's a British confection, and it starts with a layer of shortbread, and then a layer of caramel. This one has condensed milk and Lyle's golden syrup, and then a layer of chocolate. And then you cut it into perfect little bars and it's delicious. So this one is a granulated sugar shortbread. So we have all-purpose flour, salt. I think you just mix everything together. I set in the recipe butter and sugar first. The sugar will sort of cut the butter and spread it out and like aerate it a little bit, which will make it easier to mix in with your flour. But if your butter is nice and room temperature, which this is, it should be totally fine. Rules are meant to be broken. So we're just trying to evenly moisten the flour. I like to stop it before it becomes sort of like a cookie dough consistency, because I think it's easier to spread out when it's a little bit looser. So I'm gonna stop it at this sort of crumbly stage. So then you just wanna spread it out evenly, and then press it down. I like an offset for that. You can use a flat bottom measuring cup. You can use your fingers, whatever works. This goes into a 325 degree oven for about 30 minutes until it's golden brown. I think this is the perfect color. It's set everywhere, but it's not hard or overcooked. It's still tender and smells heavenly. But now we'll let this cool completely, and we can put our caramel on top. The majority of this caramel is made from condensed milk that we're basically just gonna cook until it caramelizes. I think it's important to have a candy thermometer, because we want the caramel to set firm enough in the bar, but then be soft enough to cut. And if it's too loose, that's gonna be a problem, and if it's too hard, it's also gonna be a problem. So I think a candy thermometer is your best friend. We're gonna start with condensed milk. This is the Lyle's Golden Syrup, which is syrup made from cane sugar versus corn syrup, which is made from corn. I think it kind of has a toasty flavor to it that adds something nice to the caramel, but if you can't find it, you can absolutely use corn syrup. Vanilla, oh, I should've put that in at the end. As soon as I did it, I was like, put your vanilla in at the end. And butter, salted butter if you have it, plus more salt. Yeah, if you put your vanilla in at the beginning, it's basically gonna just cook off, so better to put it in at the end. So what did I say, 220, 225. We're looking for the color to change a little bit. I said butterscotch pudding in the recipe. We're getting nice and thick. This is so fun. This is a little paler, but you can tell that it's definitely gotten darker, and we're still only at 200 degrees, so I'm gonna keep going. So we've hit 220. You can see that it's gotten so much thicker. Look at that. But you can see how much different it is from the original. Oh yeah, gotta add vanilla. And you wanna pour this out before it sets in the pot. How good does that look? Oh my God. Because it will firm up as it cools. And I wanna try to make this kind of smooth because I want my chocolate layer to be even. Okay, so now we'll let this cool completely, and then we'll put our melted chocolate on top, and then they're good to go. Okay, so here are my bars cooled and ready for chocolate. This is just chopped bittersweet chocolate. I highly recommend you use bar chocolate for the top of these. I find that chips are just too stiff, and thick when you're trying to spread it in a really nice way. If that's all you have, it'll work, no big deal. But I highly recommend bittersweet bar chocolate. So we're gonna microwave our chocolate. You have to make sure you don't scorch it in the microwave, so just do short bursts and stir in between. If you don't have a microwave, you can melt this in a double boiler. So that means a pot of water, heatproof bowl on top, make sure the water isn't touching the bottom of the bowl, and just let the steam melt the chocolate. You don't wanna do it directly on the stove because that can scorch it. Now we'll just spread it out, and that's it. We'll let this set, and then we can cut it. We just couldn't wait, so we're gonna cut it. It's mostly, mostly, mostly set, but I want a shortbread bar, so here we are. She's coming out nice. Gotta loosen the edge that the parchment isn't on. All right, yeah. Need a buddy. Yeah! There you go. Amazing. It's like a baby. Yeah, okay, ooh, smells so good. So we're gonna cut this into 32 bars, so that's eight by four. All right. Oh, yeah. It's a lot of shortbread, but I think you kinda need it because the caramel is so sweet that you need the chocolate and the shortbread to balance it out. Mm, I'm gonna be chewing for a while. The set on that caramel is perfect because it's chewy but holds its shape. I just love the ratio because I really love how much buttery shortbread there is to the rest of the stuff, and I know it looks like a very slim amount of chocolate, but it's kind of the right amount of chocolate because anything more would really overpower the other flavors. This way, I think it's beautifully balanced. You can find this recipe and so many other delicious recipes at New York Times Cooking. ♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey ♪