It turns out millionaire shortbread is one of Mrs B’s favourite things, which I’ve only just found out! Luckily it’s one of my favourites too, so we’re both winning here!
Making homemade shortbread is actually pretty simple, but what’s the difference between shortbread and millionaire’s shortbread? Apparently it’s all in the topping, the addition of the caramel and chocolate layers gives the regular old shortbread a little upgrade to millionaire status. The irony of a cheap millionaire shortbread!
So if you haven’t watched one of my cheap vs steep videos before, Mrs B and I put a recipe to the test using cheap ingredients for one and more expensive ingredients for another version, then we challenge ourselves to decide which one is best. Cheap vs steep chocolate brownies was the first one we ever did, but we’ve done everything from beans on toast to the classic scone.
I really wanted the cheap to win this one, and we both thought that the steep one would be very rich. But were we right? You’ll have to watch and find out!
In terms of price, our steep one ended up being 2.8x more expensive than the cheap, that’s insane! For this millionaire shortbread recipe, the cheap ingredients totalled up at £4.19 and the steep at £11.13, what a difference!
If you fancy giving the millionaire’s shortbread recipe a go, you can find it below – try it with cheap, steep or somewhere in between ingredients, I can promise you it’ll be good with any of them!
Millionaire’s Shortbread Recipe
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan (350C fan) and grease or line a 20-22cm baking tray.
Mix together the sieved flour and sugar in a bowl, then rub in the butter for that “nee” feel! Knead the mixture together until it forms a dough then push it into the bottom of your baking tray – it doesn’t matter if there are a few indentations from your fingers as it’ll all get masked by the next delicious layer! Now pop that into the preheated oven for 20 minutes.
The next step is the caramel, so put your remaining butter into a pan with the can of condensed milk and sugar. Here I had to put light brown sugar into the cheap up against muscovado on the steep as I didn’t have another option, so I can confirm that both work well! Stir this continuously over the heat until everything is all dissolved together, then turn down the heat to low and continue stirring for 5-10 minutes until it is thickened and it has a lovely caramel colour.
Now you can pour the caramel over the shortbread which should be nicely cooled in the tin. Let this cool to room temperature before putting it into the fridge to cool and set.
The final layer is milk chocolate on the top. Melt the broken up chocolate or chocolate chips in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Pour this over the cold caramel and leave to cool and set again.
Once it’s fully set, cut into squares and enjoy!