Salted Caramel Shortbread

We're all coming up to that dreaded yet desirable stage of  HAND-IN DAY at uni. Soon our degrees will be over and we'll all be galavanting off and making a mockery of ourselves in the grown- up world of grey skies and office ties.

But until then, I thought I'd rustle up a bit of a pick-me-up, just something to make the journey a little bit more bearable for my lovable housemates (aww, ain't I nice?)

No, no I apparently am not, as i seem to want to attack their thighs and bums with these decadent treats so that I may look skinnier than them all!! Mwuahahaa!!!

Ahem.

Moving on, caramel shortbread or millionaire's shortbread has always been a favourite in the house, but I've started a new resolution. Everything I now bake, recipe or no recipe, has to have a twist of my own in it. Whether or not it's original, I must have thought of it organically from my head. This way, I can offer you some really easy recipes to follow, or you can just stare at the (not so) pretty pictures :)

So yesterday, Caramel Shortbread was on my list. And what goes AH-MAY-ZINGLY with caramel?
Chocolate.

And what goes well with chocolate??
Shortbread.

And what is the soulmate of all these ingredients????!!!!
Well, I'm still trying to work this out. But here's me having a guess.

For this recipe, I added sea salt which gave the treat a real moreish taste and it really enhanced the true flavour of the caramel, and not just for the sweetness, which caramel is obviously renowned for.

I'm a real biscuit fiend, so i made sure the base of shortbread was pretty substantial! I feel that with the other toppings being so sweet, it really helps to have that buttery (biscuit) base to even out the sticky sweet feeling you get when you're teeth are melting.

Either way, you feel way smarter and sophis(ticated) eating these, because of course, THESE ones have salt in!!

Salted Caramel Shortbread


Shortbread

• 350g plain flour
• 100g caster sugar
• 220g butter

Caramel

• 175ml condensed milk
• 110g butter
• 110g brown sugar
• 2 level tbsps golden syrup
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp of crushed sea salt

Chocolate

• 200g plain chocolate (or you can go for milk if you find plain too dark)

You'll need:

• 8 x 8 x 1 inch baking tin

Here's what to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C/ gas 4.
2. Grease your tin and line it with a strip of baking paper so that it hangs over 2 of the edges.
3. Sift the flour and sugar together into a bowl, add the butter and rub it in, til it forms a fine breadcrumb texture.
4. (This is where I'm obviously very lazy and have no really method to doing this, but do it this way and it'll still work :P) Pull the dough into a ball. Tear off parts and press into the base of the tin firmly, until the whole base is covered with no cracks or holes. Make sure to get it right to the edges.
5. Bake for about 15-20 mins or until it start's turning a light golden brown, but still has a very slight softness (it'll harden up as it cools). Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
6. Once it's cool, start to make the caramel. Put all ingredients for the caramel (APART FROM THE VANILLA) into a thick-bottomed pan. Stir over a low heat until it starts to boil. Cook for about 6-7 mins, stirring to prevent it from burning. If it looks like a golden brown, thick, gooey mix of awesomeness, Bob's your uncle.
7. Stir in the vanilla and pour over the shortbread base and leave to cool.
8. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Pour and spread this over the caramel layer. Sprinkle over some sea salt for luck and leave to cool.
9. YOU MUST WAIT UNTIL IT'S COOL. Otherwise, you won't have any left for later.
10. Loosen up the edges of the tray bake with a palette knife. Lift it out using the two over-hanging sides of baking paper. Cut up into bars and scoff until the cows come home.

OMMER NOM NOM!!!

Rhubarb & Strawberry Crumb Bars

In two weeks time, I've been invited to meet my boyfriend's grandma for the first time at her 90th birthday party...

I'm crapping myself a little bit, since I haven't yet had a chance to meet the extended family! So a good impression is needed, and impressions means gifts- because I can't very well turn up empty handed, can I?

I was going to buy some flowers as a nice gesture, but for some reason the boyfriend is less than partial to the idea...

So the only other thing I can think of is to bake something. Which stresses me out even more, since I'm pretty sure a large majority of all the ladies at this event have done their fair share of baking, and I don't fancy embarrassing myself, trying to impress with the skills that are less than comparable to theirs :(

So, after getting over the initial shock of what I was about to throw myself into, deciding what to bake was the next challenge.

Cake?
A bit too cliche for a birthday party... And i'm pretty sure there'll be cake there.

Biscuits?
They're a bit boring, I don't want to look like a plain jane.

Cookies?
There will be old people, and I'm pretty sure cookies are a little overrated for them.

A traybake.
This is what I've settled on. It's just a matter of finding out which one will last the journey, presentation-wise and texture-wise (since I'll probably want to make it the day before).

So starts the beginning of my short experiment til the event, to find out which effing traybake to make!!!

...Trying to dance this confusion around my final major project for uni is an absolute nightmare.

I opted for a rather attractive looking Rhubarb & Strawberry Crumb Bar tray bake. I found the recipe off of foodgawker. The original recipe is found here. Her's definitely look a lot more palatable than mine, and i forgot to dust mine off with icing sugar -_-' D'oh!!

I think going down the fruit route is better than say, choosing a millionaires shortbread- it's more summery and I think people can eat more of it if it's not too rich.

Anyway, the recipe was pretty standard to follow, the only thing i was unfamiliar with was:
1) cooking with rhubarb, and
2) putting icing sugar into a cake mix

I was actually quite skeptical about using icing sugar in the cake batter, worrying it would be too sweet, but surprisingly, it turned into a very light and bouncy sponge cake! My housemates compared it to the weirdly bouncy sponge cakes you get in the shops that you don't usually get at home. So that's gotta be a plus.

Another thing i was worried about was the size of the rhubarb the recipe said to cut it to (half an inch). I understand that if you undercook rhubarb, it's very stringy and pretty inedible, and putting it raw into the cake.... ughh i dunno.. So attempting to avoid disaster at all costs, I chopped it all into quarters of inches, just to make sure. I don't know whether that was a better idea or not but either way, the rhubarb cooked all the way through and was soft and sweet, and the strawberries gave it a satisfying mush :)

The crumble topping is pretty self-explanatory, except, to the EXTREME. There was a lot of it, and when you pick up a slice, it just falls apart everywhere- it was bloody delicious though, even more so if i'd sprinkled some sugar on top before i baked it, I reckon. But because of the crumble value, I don't think it would make the cut for Grandma's birthday. I have a feeling I'll get there, take off the lid and there's just a apocalypse of crumble and giant red mush.

It was a pretty successful bake otherwise, very tasty, and I reckon it'll be even nicer cold.
It's just a shame it didn't look as nice as the original recipes. How did they get their's so red?!! :( Boo...
Oh, and next time, I'd put the mix into a bigger tin, these slices were pretty tall and mighty.

not the most attractive picture, but just so you can have a look at the squidginess (sp?!)

I'll need to look for something just as fruity, more robust but still as light as these..

The search continues..

Belgian Blondies

It was a stressful day today... So i thought i'd rustle up something rich, naughty and that would probably give me coronary heart disease in one bite.

I followed the recipe for Belgian Blondies in the "tea with Bea" book.

I've never had these before, but from what i gathered, they're pretty much like white chocolate brownies. But i only like one variety of white chocolate- Green & Blacks. So i had to fork out for this before i could get my hands on them.

Oh, and by the way, i could not BELIEVE how much butter this recipe involved!! Oh well... I guess i can just survive on one slice a week. :(

I think i overdid these on my first try though (forgot to take pictures of the caught sides of the tin)... I got a bit confused, as you set these brownies by leaving them to cool and then shoving in the fridge for 2 hours, so when you take them out of the oven, they're meant to be gooey... so i guess with a little bit of wobble still??

But i got a bit scared as i'm not used to not stabbing everything in sight with a toothpick before i take it out of the oven... Therefore, leaving them in there for a bit too long...

The sides of the batch are still edible though and i conveniently forgot to take pictures of these ones <:D

Anyway, these turned out VERY buttery and VERY rich, and they had a delicious warming from all the vanilla inside the fancy white chocolate- sooooooo tasty but i do feel very guilty after eating a slice...

They kinda reminded me of what shortbread would be like if it was a brownie... (and with more white chocolate)... it had the moreish texture of a soft fudgey brownie and the creaminess of 400 million sticks of butter from 6 billion cows.

All i have to remember for next time is to just trust, and take them out of the goddamn oven earlier!

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes & Millionaire Shortbread

I made these for a BBQ gathering we were having at our house during the amazing indian summer, along with some millionaire shortbread. I thought these would make decent bitesize summery treats for the peckish. 

I made an insane amount of millionaire shortbread as this happens to be quite a few favourites in the house. Unfortunately, due to me being stressed out and flapping around like a headless chicken at the fact there wasnt enough sugar, I made a HUGE layer of toffee caramel, a thick magnumesque marbled dark and milk chocolate layer and a very sorry layer of shortbread. Next time, next time.

The dark chocolate and the overload of caramel was just far too rich, my teeth nearly melted. Obviously the boyfriend will tell you otherwise since he has no teeth now.

As for the cupcakes, surprisingly, these were more of a love it or a hate it. Some loved it so much they bought 5 and eat them one after the other. Some didn't like the squishy texture the strawberries gave the sponge. I personally found them a little difficult to eat but it was worth it in the end. It did made me question whether i'd cooked them long enough by how squishy they were. However, there were no reports of food poisoning so that's always a plus.