How to Make One of Our Most Popular Cookies–Millionaire's Shortbread

[Music] today we're making a well-loved British cookie called millionaire's shortbread it's a sturdy shortbread topped with caramel and chocolate it's kind of like the original Twix bar we don't have to choose the right or left I know you get to eat it all whole pan is a triple level threat in terms of cookies you've got that shortbread bottom it's got kind of this toffee caramel filling and then chocolate right on top mm-hmm so it's millionaire's because it's rich lots of rich ingredients also you know it's a little bit more expensive to make them the original shortbread so that has some to do with the name so this is two and a half cups of all-purpose flour I'm going to add a half a cup of granulated sugar and 3/4 teaspoon of salt now you'll see salt going into just about every part of this recipe because millionaire sherbet can also be a little too sweet so whisk this together all right so that looks good so now we're going to add melted butter so this is 16 tablespoons of unsalted butter we're just going to pour this over our dry ingredients and then work it in you're gonna see it's gonna turn really really thick since we're using melted butter not creaming butter or cutting in cold butter this is going to be a lot more sturdy we want to make sure that we get any of those flour pockets on the bottom of the bowl worked in - it's kind of a dough at this point so you can see how thick that is yeah so let's bring it over to our pan now this is a 9 by 13 inch pan gone ahead and lined it with a foil sling very important anytime you're making any kind of bar cookie which this is and it's 2 pieces of foil and we've shaped it so that one goes right across and the other one goes right in its gonna make it easy to just retrieve it out of the pan and slice it so I'll crumble this over just to distribute it a little bit more evenly at the start you smell that butter oh that's a good day so now I'm gonna use my hand and just press this out into an even layer so that our next layer which is the caramel will also be nice and even this is looking pretty good and it's going to continue to even out as it bakes in the oven all right so now before we put it in the oven we take a fork and we're just going to make little marks about an inch apart from each other if you didn't do this the shortbread would sort of bubble up in places and you'd have these big ugly lumps not a nice even try bread all right so this is going to go into a 350-degree oven it'll stay in there until the top gets nice and light brown it's gonna take about 25 up to 30 minutes we'll also notice that the top will feel nice and firm oh it smells so good look at that beautiful shortbread beautifully even in golden so I'm just gonna take my hands gingerly it's hot but I just want to make sure that that surface is nice and firm now we do want to compact this a little bit because later on when we go just slice it we don't want it to crumble all over the place we know we're gonna get some crumbling we don't want too much so we're gonna use just a burger flipper as I like to call it long metal spatula and press down in there now the spatula can get a little bit hot so you might want to grab the top of it with a towel by the time you get to the second side it gets really hot and this is great because it's also going to compact right into those corners all right so we're gonna let this sit here you want to let it cool down for at least 20 minutes before you top it but you can actually let it cool completely as well gives us time to talk a little bit about the caramel the good part yes and this is almost I like to call it a caramel toffee mixture because it is much deeper in flavor than a traditional caramel and actually we found that the recipes all start with sweetened condensed milk this is one 14 ounce can so sweet and condensed milk because caramel can be very chewy and sticky and this makes it a little softer so easier to eat exactly mmm I give that to you and we have 7 ounces or 1 cup of firmly packed brown sugar you can use light you can use dark we also have a half a cup of corn syrup and that's really going to help the caramel stay nice and chewy stick of unsalted butter 8 tablespoons it's cut into small pieces and a half a teaspoon of salt now we did find when we were cooking this that sometimes the butter would start to split and you'd end up with the kind of a greasy layer on top of the caramel that it all had to do with how much they cook the sweet condensed milk so what we found is the more that they cook it the more the whey proteins in the milk were broken down and they're needed in there to keep the butter together so we're adding a half a cup of heavy cream which has just the right amount of whey proteins and our butter will not split so heavy cream makes a foolproof caramel layer exactly so we're gonna put this over medium heat I'll stir it every once in a while it's not like a traditional caramel but you don't want to stir we want to cook this until it reaches between 236 to 239 degrees that's going to give us exactly the right texture of caramel that's gonna take anywhere between 16 maybe up to 20 minutes all right we have achieved the right temperature anywhere between 236 and to 39 it smells amazing ahh it smells like toffee and a little coffee and there's no it tastes good it's gonna taste great all right we want to get this out of the pan we're going to pour it right onto our crust that looks so pretty having you pour it right on like that we're just going to smooth this over and to the corners you can use an offset spatula if you like and I just want to finish smoothing it out oh good all right we do want to let this completely cool that's going to take at least one and a half hours and then we can move on to the chocolate top the caramel is set it's beautiful it's completely cooled and it's nice and firm it is gorgeous system yeah it's got a nice mirror finish well we're gonna cover it all up a chocolate it's all good so we're starting off with 6 ounces of bittersweet chocolate we've chopped this very fine that's very important for our tempering method because we want this to melt evenly so we're gonna microwave this at 50% power and I'll stir it every 15 seconds until it's just melted we don't want to overheat the chocolate at this point we're gonna pull it out when the bottom of the bowl is just slightly warmer than my hand all right so this is looking good it's just a few pieces of chocolate that are still unknown in there but as I stir this I know that they're gonna melt right in so this total melting process up to this point so only take one to two minutes depending on the microwave so this looks good and now we're going to add more chocolate this is 2 ounces of bittersweet chocolate very finely grated yeah so we're gonna pour this in here I'm gonna stir this in now tiny little particles of chocolate are going to melt in very easily and since we haven't really disturbed their structure the beta crystals are still intact in here and that's gonna set off a chain reaction as the rest of the chocolate cools down and it's going to help to temper our chocolate so if this looks like it's not actually melting all the way you can always take it back to the microwave only for about 5 seconds at a time and it is just mountain all right so that is beautiful and glossy and fully melted so this is gonna go right on the caramel and it's just a thin veneer of chocolate this is not really a chocolate dessert it's a caramel too there it is really fun to watch you make this every layer just looks better and better oh good alright so now I'm gonna take an offset spatula I love these tiny little ones helps get into all those little crevices we're gonna quickly spread this over the top getting right to the edges into the corners so this is going to go into the fridge just until the chocolate is set that's gonna take about ten minutes it's time for the payoff Julia yay ten minutes in the fridge the chocolate is just set so now we're gonna get it out of the pan and thanks to the foil sling that should be very easy I love this sling trick and it works well for all sorts of bar cookies and brownies there we go heal this back and now I'm gonna lift it up if you wouldn't mind taking that foil away you bet it's even prettier out of the pan it serves one we're gonna cut these into smaller pieces because a little bit goes a long way and it's very easy to do but you do want to use a serrated knife I like to score through the chocolate first so I'm going to cut it width wise or crosswise right in half there we go so now each of these gets cut again in half just a little bit of the sawing gentle and we'll go ahead and cut this one in half as well so now each one of these gets cut into ten pieces this is where you really want to go slow here there we go two for you two for me because I'm gonna say oh I only want one Bridget man I'm gonna say where's my other one bring it these are just beautiful I mean those layers are so nice and even and like you said not a thick layer chocolate just that thin veneer on top it's beautiful yeah it's just enough of that bittersweet chocolate you're gonna say it's perfect combination mmm-hmm shut the door this is really good it's not only the flavor it's the texture it's the firmness of the shortbread and that caramel layer has the perfect texture these are simply amazing Brigitte well done thank you so if you want to be a millionaire you have to get your hands a little dirty and use them to press in a quick shortbread crust into a baking pan a combination of sweetened condensed milk and heavy cream makes a foolproof caramel layer then the whole shebang is topped off with a beautiful layer of tempered chocolate from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen a top drawer recipe for a millionaire's shortbread the field which are already mm-hmm pay you in shortbread hmm thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later I'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 297,997

Rating: 4.9448776 out of 5

Keywords: millionaire's shortbread, millionaires shortbread, shortbread, caramel, chocolate, americas test kitchen millionaire's shortbread, americas test kitchen, america's test kitchen, cookies, baking, desserts, recipes, cookie recipe, baking videos, cooking show, cooking tv show

Id: 0F8vDeka3kc

Length: 9min 49sec (589 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 25 2019