Millionaire Shortbread and Fireworks.

This week I wanted to do something simple but awesome, something from when I was a kid. I remember taking a bunch of trips to England when I was a little, and one of the things that sticks out in my mind is my Grandma showing me how to make this dessert bar. It's shortbread, rich caramel and chocolate. Ridiculously good.  I'll start with the three different groups of ingredients.
Shortbread Layer

2 sticks of butter, I froze these and then grated it with a cheese grater.
2 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Caramel Layer
2 cans condensed milk
2 tbsps butter

Chocolate Ganache
2 1/2 bars of decent chocolate ( I went to shoppers drugmart and found two bars of dark chocolate that was on sale for 1.99 each. I then threw in some semi-sweet baking chocolate I had lying around )
1/3 cup scalded cream (or a bit more, it's up to you. Less cream will give your chocolate a harder break, while more will add pliability to it)

To start, you'll need to preheat your oven to 350 ° and get your baking tins ready. This is a pretty big recipe so you'll need two 8 inch pans, or whatever you have lying around. You could do it in a larger casserole dish if you wanted to. Take the wrapper off of your butter and use it to grease up the inside of the dishes. Then you just sprinkle some flour into your dish, moving it around, trying to coat all the butter. Tapping the back of the pan helps aswell.

Mixing the shortbread is fairly easy. You can either cut up your butter into tiny chunks, mix all your dry ingredients, throw it all in a food processor and buzz till it looks like peas OR, if you're sorta poor like me and don't have a fancy food processor you can freeze and grate the butter into your dry ingedients and mix it like you would a pie crust ; rubbing it between your palms to flake it into the dough.

 I got mine to a bread crumb stage and then divided it between the two pans. Then, it's just a matter of smoothing it out and pressing it down. I used this giant spatula I have (coated in flour first) to make it all nice and smooth.


 These puppies need atleast 20-25 minutes in the oven before they're ready. You'll start to notice a golden brown edge and it'll smell delicious.


Set your cookies aside and get started on some tasty (faux) caramel. This stuff is rich, sorta chewy and very sweet. I put two cans of condensed milk and the butter into a thick bottomed pot and slowly brought it up to a light boil.  It looked like creamy lava.

The secret to this is to stir the everloving crap out of it. Don't let it burn, it'll suck to clean and you'll be sad. You're going to be doing this for awhile, so maybe throw on the television. I watched an episode of Community and it was hilarious. I've found that the best way to know when it's ready is to keep one of the lids from the condensed milk to make a colour comparison with. I kept on staring this bubbling mess I had on the stove, trying to figure out if it was done or not. If you keep the lid then you'll know when it's done. It'll be a few shades darker, like a light amber. The caramel will also pull away from the sides as an almost solid mass. Once you like the colour, go ahead and pour it over your two giant shortbread cookies, smoothing it out with a rubber spatula. Set these in the fridge to cool while you make ganache.

This part is criminally easy for how good it tastes. And you can use it for so many things. Chocolate covered strawberries, a cracked cheesecake topping, the possibilities are endless. Heat up your cream until just before boiling (scald) and break up your chocolate into a small bowl. Pour hot cream over chocolate, and let it sit for a little while. The cream melts the chocolate and it's just a matter of mixing it together to smooth it out. Work the cookies one at a time, using a small offset spatula to smooth out the chocolate. I did a little design in mine, but no one spends a long time looking at these, it you're smelling what I'm stepping it.

Afterwards you throw 'em in the fridge for another 20 minutes or so cut them into shapes and enjoy!

Ginger was upset that we didn't do anything dog-related this week so we took her to the local Bocci ball (i'unno) court so she could have a runaround in the tall grass.

She had a grand old time up until all the fireworks started going off and scraring the crap outta her, so we headed home to watch them from the balcony while she hid.

Happy (belated) Victoria's Day!