Millionaires Shortbread

Ingredients:
Shortbread:
175g / 6 oz butter
50g / 1.8 oz icing sugar

30g/ 1 oz light brown granulated sugar

175g / 6 oz OO flour
75g / 2.6 oz corn-flour

Caramel:
1 x tin of 397g condensed milk
2 tbsp golden syrup

Chocolate topping:
160g / 6 oz good chocolate
I used a mix of green and blacks different flavour including: butterscotch, milk, dark and almond, but choose any you prefer.
2 tbsp single cream
 
You can get really good caramel simply by heating the condensed milk on a really low heat with just a couple of spoons of golden syrup in. Either that or follow Heston Blumenthal's trick of simmering the unopened tin for 4 hours in a pan of water. The chocolate topping is best kept simple. Use good quality chocolate with perhaps just a little drizzle of cream. The good old faithful and simple shortbread method below carries these two heavier layers surprisingly well to say how delicate it is. This is the holy grail of shortbreads.

Grease a 20/30cm or 12/8 inch swiss roll tin and line with grease proof paper. Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees.

Cream the butter and two sugars together in a large mixing bowl.

Sift the corn flour and OO flour into the butter-cream. Lightly crumble together into breadcrumb-like textures by rubbing through your thumb and fore-finger and lifting up high out of the bowl as you rub in order to aerate the pastry.

Turn into the prepared swiss-roll tin. Spread evenly over the base. Even the shortbread texture with the back of a big spoon until you have an even surface. 

Cook in the pre-heated oven for about 20 minutes. Remove and chill.

Once chilled get a small pan on the heat and empty in the condensed milk. Heat through over a very low heat. Stirring from time to time for 40 minutes. You need to get the heat as low as possibly and make sure you stir with a silicone/wooden spoon. If you are boiling the milk cover the tin with water in a deep pan and bring the water to the boil, once boiling reduce to a simmer and leave on a low heat, un-opened, for 4 hours. This option you get away from having to stir but it does take a while longer.

Once you have a caramel colour and texture stir the golden syrup through.
 
Pour the caramel over your chilled shortbread. It will be quite thick so get it as even as you can by using a palate or butter knife to cover the whole base. Do this carefully so it doesn't pick up any of the shortbread underneath. If you're having difficulty ait until this section is chilled to spread out completely and evenly.

Chill the shortbread and caramel in the fridge for over an hour until the caramel toughens. Once chilled, get a pan of shallow boiling water, once boiling turn the heat off and place the chocolate, cut in chunks, in a heat-proof bowl, sat over but not in the water.

Stir to melt for a couple of minutes then add the cream. Stir together. Leave again for a couple of minutes more so it has all melted through.
 
Pour over the cooled caramel. Return to the fridge for a final chilling.

After an hour or two you will be left with a solid block of millionaires shortbread. Lift out by the ends of the grease proof paper and gently remove . Lay the slab out for cutting into. whatever biscuit shapes you decide. This is quite rich so the smaller the portions the better.

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Ginger-Stem-Men

There's something a little mystical and magical about the old gingerbread folk; devoured at Christmas and chased by baddies in nursery rhymes. These are biscuits with baggage, that never fail to attract the restless hands of curious cooks. I'm ashamed to say though that, for a long time now I had seriously neglected them. Probably due to the fact that the shop bought ones scare me a little bit, with their gorily decorated, bright-as-the-sun icing smiles, staring back at you off the shelves. The gore didn't bode well in the taste department either. There's nothing magical about a sweeter than sweet cookie that's rock solid with barley a whiff of ginger. I've got a hazy memory carried over from childhood that a gingerbread-man should be soft in the centre with a little snap on the outter, and have a fiery, spicy and very very gingery kick.

I've been pondering the ultimate gingerbread man for a while now and have fialed miserably on many attempts to create perfect spicy dough. One attempt came out a bit like a spicey digestive biscuit, revolting I thought but apparently not to some people who said it reminded them how much they like digestives. I was determined to stir as far away as possible form the digestive similarities and remembered trying some regular circular ginger biscuits that had stem ginger in them. This would definitely add to the gooey soft centre. It had to be tried. It was and it worked. Well. Better than well. Of all the spicy dough combinations this made the most sense and got the best results.

These gingerstem-men are more spicy than sweet, have a fiery ginger kick, and the added extra dollop here and there of gooey stem ginger. It makes their usual roadkill physique look a little more characterful and lumpy and bumpy but I prefer them with their physical imperfections as long as the taste is the best. If you have a bit of the Bree Van De Kamp about you and prefer the immaculate appearance you could easily chop the ginger much more finely beforehand or whizz it up in a food processor this way you would still get the gooey texture with a smoother surface.

Ingredients:

100g / 3 and half oz unsalted butter
5 tablespoons demarera sugar
7 tablespoons Golden Syrup
2 teaspoons ground ginger
Half a teaspoon of Cinnamon
Half a teaspoon of Nutmeg
Ground black pepper, a pinch
200g / 7 oz plain flour
Half a teaspoon baking powder
Half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Seal Salt, a pinch
50g / 1.7 oz Crystallised stem ginger

Boil the kettle and fill a deep bowl two thirds full with boiling water. Put golden syrup tin in the water with the lid still on. Leave it in there as you get on with the rest of the baking. (This makes it easier to pour and measure than when it's at room temperature.)

Get a medium sized pan on a low heat and melt the butter slowly. Be careful not to brown it by heating it too high. When the majority has melted stir through the sugar until it dissolves and then add your runny-er syrup, ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper. Stir this through for a minute or two more until you get a gooey brown mix. Set to one side to cool.

Whilst cooling heat the oven to 170 degrees C, Gas mark 3, or 325 F. Chop the ginger finely (or whizz with a blender). Prepare a baking tray with a sheet of baking paper covering the surface. Brush with a little melted butter to stop the biscuits sticking.

Sieve the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in to a large mixing bowl. Stir in the chopped ginger. Gently add in the cooled off liquid mixture bit by bit folding together with the tips of your fingers to bind. If it's too runny add a little more flour (too dry add more melted butter). You want to end up with a moist but firm light brown coloured dough.

Lots of recipes now call for the dough to rest in the fridge but I have found that baking powder and bicarbonate of soda respond best to being cooked immediately. I tried cooking half this batch immmediately and then half after 2 hours rest, and the best biscuits came out from the dough that hadn't rested.

I rolled my dough relatively thinly (about 2-3mml) to keep them moist after being cooked and also shaped my own by flattening and shaping the head out and pinching out the arms and legs. It's fun seeing the different shaped ones that come out rather than the uniform cutter shapes. When you take them out they are still soft so you could shape them further before they go hard by running the the blunt side of a knife around the edges.

If you are using the handy cutters, divide the dough in half and roll one piece at a time, with a rolling pin, again quite thin (1cm) on a floured surface. Then place them on the buttered parchment paper and bake in the pre-heated oven for 17 minutes. Take out and leave to cool until they go solid. Keep an eye on them. You want them to be a nice golden colour and not too dark a brown.

Should make 17 or more medium sized ginger-stem-men.

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Granola Mounds

I like Granola and I love fruit but I can't do the whole eating dried fruit in granola thing, and so annoyingly go round picking out all the brightly coloured lumps of dehydrated fruit. Inevitably, the day came to get cracking on some home-made granola. At the drawing board; decided it has to be very nutty, very seed-y and not a bit of dried fruit in sight.

Somewhere in the mix it began to look like a good idea not to stop there and bake the whole thing in some caramilised condensed milk type solution and throw a bit of sea salt over to contrast the whole sweetness of the caramel. Too far? Maybe. But. it did taste very good. Everyone needs a bit of indulgence now and again. This, then, is more of a power-bar granola. One piece gives you loads of energy.

Ingredients:
1 tin 397g x Condensed Milk

150g/5 oz Unsalted peanuts

40g/ 1 oz Hazelnuts (without skins)

40g/ 1 oz Pecans

90g/ 3 oz Pumpkin Seeds

50g/ 2 oz Sunflower Seeds

2tbsp of Sesame Seeds

A few sprinkles of Demarera Sugar,

Seal Salt and Black Pepper

35g/ 1 oz unsalted butter, extra for greasing

200g/ 7 oz rolled (porridge) oats. (Make sure they're the rolled kind)

3tbsp of honey

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C / 356 F

Put the milk tin, unopened, in a large pan of simmering water and leave bubbling for approx 1 and half hours.

When it has 10 minutes left put the three nut ingredients in a plastic, sandwich type bag. Shake them to the bottom, push the air out and grasp the top. Get something heavy like a rolling pin and bash them about so they break up slightly. Keep turning the bag to make this even. If you don't have the bag and pin just roughly chop them on a board.

Scatter on a baking tray and add a few sprinkles of sugar, sea-salt, and grinds of black-pepper. Put in the hot oven for 10 minutes.

Remove and add the pumpkin and sunflower seeds only. Give the tray a stir about, add a further small sprinkle of sugar, reduce the oven heat to 140 degrees C / 284 F and bake for a further 5 minutes.

When you take them out pop the heat back up to 160 degrees C / 320 F. Get an ovenproof tray, about 22x29cm ready for baking the bars by greasing it with a little butter.

Take the pan off the heat and hold under a cold water tap whilst in the pan so the water runs cold around it and the tin begins to cool. Take the tin out with a towel and open. Get a pan on the hob and heat 25g / 1 oz of the butter. Stir in the heated milk.

After a minute stir through the oats, then the tray of nuts and seeds. Spoon out half the mix in to the base of the greased tray and press down with the back of a spoon. Add the other half and do the same. When it is all pushed down sprinkle the top with the sesame seeds so it just about covers the surface. Put it in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes.

Whilst they're in there take a small pan and melt the rest of the butter and stir through the honey, keep stirring for about 3 minutes. Get this ready and warm for when the granola comes out.

Remove the granola after 20 minutes and spoon over the honey mix. Spread over the top whilst it is still piping hot. Leave to cool for about 15 minutes. Cut the tray up into thinnish bars, as they are quite rich and filling!

Take out and leave to cool.

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