13. Caramel Shortbread

Shortbread:
115g butter
175g plain flour
55g caster sugar
Pinch of salt

Toppings:
175g butter
115g caster sugar
3tbsp golden syrup
400ml can condensed milk
100g plain chocolate
100g milk chocolate
50g white chocolate

Preheat overn to 180C and grease and line a 9x9 inch tin, or similar. Place the butter, sugar and flour in a bowl and rub together until the dough breadcrumbs and then comes together. Press the mixture in the prepared tin and even off the top. Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven and set aside when done.

Meanwhile, place the butter, sugar, syrup and condensed milk in a saucepan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves. Gently bring to a boil and then simmer for 6-8 minutes, stirring constantly, or until a thick caramelly colour has been reached. Pour over the base (this can be done while the base is warm) and make sure it's fully spread out before chilling in the fridge.

When the caramel is completely cooled, melt the milk and plain chocolate together in a bain-marie until smooth. Remove from the heat and repeat the process in a seperate bowl with the white chocolate. Pour the milk/plain chocolate mix over the caramel and smooth over. Then drizzle the white chocolate over the top. If you want a 'swirly' finish drag a toothpick or skewer through the chocolates to create patterns, otherwise just leave in drizzled lines. Leave to cool completely before cutting up into desired portions!

The basic parts of this recipe comes from Cookies and Bars written by Linda Doeser and is another volume in the 'Love Food' range. It's a pretty sound basic recipe for the caramel and shortbread and i just made a few tweaks, starting with adding some salt into the shortbread mixture just to give a bite of savoury against the huge amounts of sweet! Secondly, i altered the topping to a half and half mixture of milk and plain chocolate just because i don't like too much bitterness on top while not going too far the other way. I also like to finish with the marbled white as it gives it a slightly more pleasing look, but that's just aesthetics!

Overall, it's a straight forward and easy recipe but it's worth considering the ratios of the finished article- as can be seen, the caramel accounts for about half of the bar with the shortbread coming in second and the chocolate trailing behind in a sad third. I quite like the amounts, as did everyone who tried some, but if you prefer more shortbread or chocolate then it might be an idea to tweak the amounts for each layer!