Caramel shortbread
Shortbread is one of my favourite biscuits to make. It is quick, only has three ingredients, and I use my Nana’s recipe. From 3 year’s of age, I used to watch my Nana in the kitchen, and over the years I must have spent hundreds of hours cooking with her, and learning from her.
So I make her shortbread regularly, and I never tire of making (or eating!) shortbread. I even made it for my wedding, and wrapped up little heart-shaped shortbread for my guests to have. I really love her shortbread!
For this recipe, the butter is the star so buy the best you can afford. Lurpak is by far the best butter, but it is certainly not the cheapest!
Ingredients
Shortbread
220g of softened butter
1/2 cup of castor sugar
2 cups of plain flour
Caramel
1 tin of sweetened condensed milk (395g)
2 tablespoons golden syrup
60g butter
salt (optional)
Shortbread
Mix butter and sugar together with a hand beater until the sugar is dissolved, and the mixture is lighter in colour and creamy. The length of time this takes depends on the butter, but it should take no more than 2 minutes. My Nana always said to check if the butter had dissolved by rubbing a tiny bit of the mixture between my thumb and index finger. If it felt gritty, it wasn’t dissolved. It if felt smooth, you are ready to go to the next step.
Add the flour, and mix with a wooden spoon. It is a very firm mixture. You can either roll it out on a floured board and use biscuit cutters to make shapes, or you can roll into balls and flatten them slightly.
Bake for about 12 minutes at 160 degrees (fan forced oven) or 180 degrees.
Leave the hot biscuits on the tray for 10 minutes, and then place them on a cooling rack. This step helps the biscuits to firm up a little before you move them, so they don’t crumble.
Caramel
There are 3 ways you can cook the caramel:
1. Microwave. Cook the caramel for 30 second bursts, mixing well in between.
2. Saucepan over low heat. You will need to stir it constantly. This takes about 10 minutes.
3. Bowl placed over a saucepan of boiling water. This will take 20 minutes, but you only need to stir it occasionally.
Whichever method you use – just chuck all ingredients in and then you are looking for the mixture to get thicker and change colour slightly. Remember that caramel gets really hot when you cook it, so let it cool down before you taste it. You can always pop it back in the microwave or over the heat again once it’s cooled slightly if it needs more cooking. I’d suggest you focus more on the taste of the caramel then how it looks.
Salted caramel option
To make a salted caramel – simply add salt to taste – start with 1/2 teaspoon and go from there. It is more about your taste then following a recipe. Make sure the caramel is cool when tasting!
Once the caramel is exactly how you like it, let it cool down for 15 minutes, and then it’s ready to use.
To Finish
Let the shortbread and caramel cool down and simply spoon a teaspoonful of caramel onto the shortbread. The sprinkles on top are obviously optional, but they do make the biscuits look pretty!
One option is to spread some caramel onto the base of one biscuit, and then sandwich it to another biscuit about the same size – a bit like a melting moment. Yum!
