LOOK AT THIS!

I can't quite remember why it occurred to me to make some millionaires' shortbread. Maybe one of the kids mentioned it recently but, anyway, I bought all the ingredients when I was at Booths, yesterday, and set about making it late this afternoon. The recipe is laid out below. Suffice to say, I was *really* pleased with how it turned out.

Today was also the 200th edition of Electronic Ears that I've recorded for Cando FM. I hadn't been sure what to do but in the end I opted to play 11 songs that I felt that I might not have heard if I hadn't started doing the radio show; it's been a very good and consistent motivation to find and listen to new music. You can hear the show here.

So, the recipe! You will need:

250g plain flour
75g caster sugar
100g of light Muscovado sugar
275g butter
2 x 397g tins of condensed milk
200g milk chocolate

To start, make the shortbread. This is a cinch: mix the flour, caster sugar, and 175g of the butter in a bowl and rub it with your fingertips until it becomes crumb-like. This instruction completely omits the fact that the mixture gets all over your fingers and you need to keep scraping it off. But you'll get there. Then push the mixture together until you have a ball of dough, which you need to flatten into a tin.

I probably should have mentioned before that you need to have put your oven on (180C) and also greased your tin. The tin should be around 20cm by 30cm and I had a panic that there wasn't enough dough but I flattened it all out and it rose to form a good base (once baked!). 

Bake that for 20 minutes and then take it out and leave it to cool. 

You make the middle bit by melting the remaining 100g of butter in a saucepan and then adding the Muscovado sugar and the tins of condensed milk. I lost a bit of time here wondering why the manufacturers have such an apparent aversion to rounding up, but 397g seems to be standard for condensed milk. Go figure.

But yes, add the condensed milk to the butter and sugar, and bring it all to the boil whilst stirring constantly. Then lower the heat to that the mixture is simmering and keep stirring for about 10 minutes. God knows how you'll manage this if you have an electric hob.

Once that's done, you can pour it over the shortbread. 

At this point, go and do something - like record a radio show - while everything cools down. 

To melt the chocolate, set some water boiling in a saucepan, and rest a glass bowl in the top, and then break up all your chocolate into the bowl. I had to buy three 90g bars to get my 200g, so there was plenty left over for scoffing, if that's the kind of cook you are. (I am.)

Once your chocolate is nicely creamy and smooth, you can tip it all over the top of the butter/sugar/condensed milk mixture and spread it out. Then you need to leave it to set, which takes about an hour (I put it it in the fridge once it was down to room temperature.)

And that's it. It came out so much better than I was expecting it to! 

****
-9.6 kgs
Reading: 'The Sound Of Tomorrow' by Mark Brend