GBBO 2017 Week 4 - Peanut Butter Millionaire's Shortbread

This was the best week of GBBO by far. I love love love caramel, so to find out that the whole theme of the show was caramel was like a dream. The signature challenge were millionaire's shortbread (or as my boyfriend calls them, Rich Man Biscuits), and I was really intrigued with what the bakers would come up with. Traditionally they have a shortbread base, caramel middle, and are topped with chocolate. I've made them before, but have never been able to make the caramel from scratch (i.e. without the help of condensed milk) before (my other recipe, which is also gluten free, is here).

So I was pretty excited to see what the baker's would bake. Some didn't appeal to me - bay leaf infused caramel for instance, just sounds a bit too weird for mass appeal. However, I loved the idea Sophie had of making individual shortbread biscuits, wrapping them in acetate then topping with layers of caramel, orange chocolate ganache, and chocolate.

Although I loved her ganache (I tried it out and it was amazing, so I may do another blog post about that later on), Liam's peanut butter millionaire's shortbread really took my eye so I decided to give them a go, with a few cheeky tweaks along the way.

Oh, and these taste incredible!! The caramel sets perfectly (helped by the peanut butter), and it sort of reminds me of a caramel snickers bar, except made even better with a layer of perfect shortbread. I've never used ground rice (also called rice flour) before, but it really worked a treat.

One money-saving tweak I tested, which worked really well, is to use baking margarine instead of butter. Personally I think the shortbread base doesn't suffer (with all the other flavours going on you don't miss it, and the texture seems very close to that when you use butter), and the caramel set just fine. Butter will obviously work too, but I thought it'd be nice to let people know when I'm able to cut the price of ingredients :)

I tried wrapping strips of plastic wallet (in place of acetate sheets), and had no issues of spillage. However, the end result wasn't perfectly clean as the caramel stuck too the sheet (but maybe if you grease the plastic that wouldn't happen). It was a lot less time consuming to use a loose bottomed individual mini cake tins - I already had one, which I got from Lakeland years ago (see below). If you don't have one, try the acetate trick out :) Instructions for both methods are in my recipe.

These tins have removable bases and have straight sides, perfect for shortbread

Easily makes 12 millionaire's shortbreads (unless you want huge ones...)

Ingredients:

For the shortbread :

• 175g (1 cup & 8 tbsp) plain flour, plus extra for dusting
• 90g (2/3 cup) ground rice
• ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
• 85g (1/2 cup minus 1 tbsp) caster sugar
• 175g (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, chilled (or baking margarine)
• ½ teaspoon vanilla bean paste

For the peanut butter:

• 100g (2/3 cup) roasted salted peanuts
• 1/2 tbsp honey
• 1 teaspoon nut oil (vegetable oil will also work)

For the caramel:

• 90ml (2/5 cup) double cream
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 30g (2 tbsp) liquid glucose
• 185g (3/4 cup) caster sugar
• 100g (1/2 cup minus 1 tbsp) butter, at room temperature, diced (or baking margarine)

For the chocolate topping:

• 200g (1 & 1/3 cups) dark chocolate (55% cocoa solids)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180c (160c fan)/355f/ gas mark 4.

• If you are using the individual moulds, grease the base and sides of each mould and dust lightly with flour.
• If you are going to use the acetate moulds, grease and line the base of two baking trays with baking paper. Find a circular biscuit cutter (I used a 5cm cutter) and cut out pieces of acetate/plastic wallets so that they are 5cm wide and around 16cm long (so that it could surround the 5cm biscuit).
• If you want to be traditional and make one large millionaire's shortbread, grease and line the base of a 20cm square cake tin with baking paper.

2. Sift the plain flour and ground rice into a bowl with the salt and the sugar. Add the vanilla, then rub in the butter/margarine to form a dough. Gently bring into a ball.

3. Line your surface with clingfilm and tip the dough onto the surface. Cover with another layer of cling film, then roll out until the shortbread is around 1cm thick.

4. If using the moulds or the baking trays, cut out 5cm circles of the dough and place in the moulds or on the baking sheets. If making one large shortbread, roll out until it is 20x 20cm, then transfer to the cake tin.
Place in the fridge for 30 minutes to firm up.

5. Bake the shortbread for 12-14 minutes, until lightly golden. Remove from the oven to cool.

6. If using the acetate to make individual shortbreads, after removing from the oven, use the biscuit cutter to trim the biscuits to size (if they have spread on the trays). Wrap one of the pieces of acetate around a biscuit and secure in place with some tape. Try to get it as tight as possible to avoid leakage later.

7. To make the peanut butter, add the roasted peanuts, honey and oil to a high powered blender (you could use a pestle and mortar too), and blitz until the peanuts have broken down but there are still chunks remaining. Taste, and add more honey or salt if needed.

8. To make the caramel, place 60g (4 tbsp) of the caster sugar in a saucepan with the liquid glucose. Place on a low heat and frequently tilt the pan, until the sugar has melted and is a caramel colour. Meanwhile, heat the double cream and butter/margarine in another saucepan until it is lightly simmering.

9. Add the remaining (125g) caster sugar to the melted sugar and swirl the pan to incorporate the sugar. Keep a close eye on the sugar bubbling, until it is all a rich caramel colour.

10. Take off the heat (be sure to be holding the pan handle with an oven glove!), and pour over the simmering cream and butter. The mixture will bubble up a lot so be careful. Return to the heat, and stir continuously until the mixture is 110c/230f. Take off the heat and leave to cool for 15-20 minutes, until the temperature is around 50c.

11. Add two heaped teaspoons of the peanut butter to the caramel, and stir to combine. Add two tablespoons of caramel to each mould (or pour the whole thing over  the cake tin), and place in the fridge to set.

12. Melt the chocolate in a microwave on high power for 30 second bursts, stirring well after each addition. Add a teaspoon of the melted chocolate to each mould - I made some of mine thicker and regretted it, so keep the layer thin! Place in the fridge to set for 20 minutes.

13. Remove from the moulds, slice (if necessary).

14. Enjoy!