Millionaire's Shortbread | Basics with Babish

basics

with

babish

and my website

basics

with

babish

comm or brought to you by Squarespace head there now to see all recipes from kitchen equipment lists and more get 10% off your first Squarespace order by visiting squarespace.com slash babish from websites and online stores to marketing and analytics tools Squarespace is the all-in-one platform for building a beautiful online presence and running your business right so today we're making one of my favorite cookies for

millionaire

s and before Before we can make our millions we have to make

shortbread

cookies in a large bowl there is a quarter cup of brown sugar a teaspoon of vanilla extract and kosher salt and 1/2 cup of melted unsalted butter give it a good size regular and mix until smooth and smooth and then we're going to add about a cup of all purpose flour, I say about a cup because

shortbread

is pretty forgiving, we're really looking for more consistency here, something that will hold its shape when pressed, but it's still nice and crumbly so we're going to liberally butter our baking dish of choice pour in our shortbread batter and press it down with your wet fingers or if you want the top really nice and smooth the bottom flat out of a pan until it looks like this, then all that's left to do before baking is flattening or the act of piercing lots and lots of little holes in our shortbread with a fork and then optionally covering with a pinch of raw or turbinada sugar by tapping with our mold to make sure it sticks in place and making a temperature of 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 to 20 minutes until golden, crisp and rigid.

Let them cool completely on a wire rack for about an hour before slicing and serving and there you have it. One of the easiest cookies to make and tastiest to eat in all of human history. It's buttery. tender, it's crunchy, it has a texture that paul hollywood would call very short, how do we improve on such simple perfection? easy, we drown it in caramel and chocolate, you'll notice I'm making another batch of shortbread here, this time a double batch because we need enough to comfortably fill a lasagna pan like this that, to quickly release the cookies later, we're going to line with foil one sheet trimmed across and the other trimmed lengthwise the same way we would with brownies and then why not I don't want the cookies to stick to the foil or are we going to generously lubricate with butter before to press our shortbread dough in.

I don't think a pan is going to cut it this time, so use something big and flat on top as well. Irregular biscuits have a bushy garter appearance. Similarly, we're flattening our pan dulce before placing it in a 350 degree oven this time for 17 to 22 minutes because it's a little thicker. Let cool on a wire rack until completely cool, about two hours. plenty of time to deal with our caramel in a medium saucepan goes 1/2 cup unsalted butter 1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk I'm sorry you had to see that sometimes I just can't help myself 1 cup light brown sugar 1/2 cup syrup of corn and half a cup of heavy cream you would also have to be crazy to make unsalted caramel so a teaspoon of kosher salt then we head to the stove where we will place this whole thing over medium heat trying to whip it all together to no avail and having to resort to a regular size whisk then we're simmering and whisking frequently for about 15 to 20 minutes until it hits 236 degrees Fahrenheit it'll stop around 225 but just keep going and don't give up to get the consistency right on our caramel we need to finish between 236 and 240 degrees Fahrenheit once it has reached the right temperature we are going to pour our caramel we are waiting for pan dulce we are then we will use an offset spatula to push it in all the corners and spread it out evenly and hit it several times against the countertop to pop the bubbles next, we'll set it aside to cool completely because it's time to work. the final elements of our

millionaire

shortbread a tempered chocolate coating for this we need 8 ounces of dark chocolate either wafer shaped or coarsely chopped whatever you have will take about 2 ounces chop it nicely and set aside this one it will be the seed that helps our chocolate to temper ooh chocolate tempering is based on that for a new band name anyway we are going to melt the remaining six ounces of our chocolate under a double boiler just go ahead and pour the chocolate in there mix it up and let the mucus melt allowing it to exceed a temperature of 120 degrees Fahrenheit removing it from the heat so that it finishes melting if necessary then we are going to remove it from the heat completely and then we are going to immediately stir our chocolate with seeds this will help to cool the chocolate and will allow it to temper perfectly once it reaches 82 degrees Fahrenheit we'll pour it over our cooled caramel, pushing it into all the corners and spreading it out well and even with that spatula give it a brisk motion and a few flicks to make sure it's just right and even and all the bubbles have burst and then it's time to cover and refrigerate for 10 minutes or until the chocolate is set and as you can see I didn't temper my chocolate correctly.

I got it too hot so it ended up a little scratchy but it's still done now we'll just use our foil handles to lift the pan dulce out of the pan slowly and carefully remove the foil and get ready to slice I'm just going to slice to these guys in bars. I think that is its most natural form. See if we got a nice even coverage across our cross section and made the chocolate is cutting a little slit, but they'll still look great. I tried. Experimenting with a bread knife. I do not recommend it. I'll try making long, sweeping slices through the chocolate first and then pressing down through the caramel and cookie layers.

This keeps the chocolate from cracking and gives you nice little cookies. it's the only thing on this planet bigger than a Twix bar the millionaire's shortbread a crunchy and chewy amalgamation of chocolate caramel cookie that simply has to be tasted to be believed it's the perfect Valentine's Day cookie i mean guess which one it's the next big holiday we're having next daylight saving time it's the perfect daylight saving time cookie this episode and many others have been sponsored by Squarespace because they've been an amazing partner in both bringing this show and my websites to life. platform to use which made it very easy for someone like me who has never done web design ever they have templates they do domains they have very good customer service its basically a one stop shop for building a really nifty website if you want to try it yourself you can start your free trial today by visiting squarespace.com slash babish for 10% off your first purchase you