This recipe is the result of one of the most genuine moments of creative inspiration I’ve had in a long old time. It came to me on a dark Sunday night after I had poured half a can of leftover evaporated milk (we’d had some sloshed onto our post-roast blackcurrant jelly, a firm fave) into a plastic container and bunged it in the fridge. “That’s going to sit in there until I throw it away,” I thought to myself. Then I watched David Attenborough’s ‘A Life On This Planet’ on Netflix and sobbed. I needed to do something with this leftover milk, so I went down an #evaporatedmilk hashtag wormhole for inspiration, and saw an incredible picture of millionaire shortbread, its layer of caramel oozing from beneath the chocolate lid.
Now this particular sweet has never been something I’ve really enjoyed – owing to the fact it’s so often overly sickening, sugary and cloying – but I was rather taken with the idea of making a superior version, and when my eye was drawn in the fridge to my jar of tamarind paste – it set of a chain reaction of ‘what ifs?’ in my brain, and before I knew it I was scooping insanely delicious tamarind caramel from the pan to my mouth. Having perfected the fluffiest, lightest, most melt-in-the mouth all-butter shortbread earlier this year, I was thrilled to put the two together for this recipe. I love how the tamarind sharpens the caramel, already slightly salty from the saline quality of the evaporated milk (make sure you use evaporated, rather than condensed milk: they are totally different), but if you don’t have tamarind to hand, use a tablespoon of lime juice, whisked in once the caramel is thick. I use lime zest to lift the shortbread, and a wonderfully fruity, single estate Fairtrade 70% dark chocolate for the lid.
The resulting millionaire’s shortbread is revelatory – it even got the thumbs up from my mum, my harshest critic and the least sweet-toothed person I know. So without further ado, I give you the recipe, below. If you don’t want to end up with half a tin of evap in your fridge, why not double the recipe and freeze one tray. I really think you’ll end up wanting these babies on repeat.
Tamarind caramel millionaire's shortbread
For the caramel
230g evaporated milk (Essential Waitrose is good)
100g dark muscovado sugar
40g butter
1 tbsp tamarind paste
1/4 tsp chilli powder or cayenne pepper
A pinch of salt
For the lime shortbread
150g plain flour
2 tbsp rice flour
2 tbsp cornflour
Pinch of salt
135g butter, softened (this means definitely not cold from the fridge, let that baby warm up)
65g sugar
Zest of 1 lime
For the topping
100g 70% Fairtrade dark chocolate, melted
- Heat the oven to 150 fan and line a 15x22cm baking tin with baking paper. In a food mixer, or using an electric whisk, whisk the butter for a couple of minutes to fluff it up, then pour over the sugar and lime zest and cream with the butter for a good few minutes, until pale, soft and fluffy. Make sure you take your time here, you want it really fluffy to create a melt-in-the-mouth base. Combine the flours and salt and then sift into the butter mix, stirring until you have a loose dough.
- Bring it together with your hands to form a smooth dough, then pat it into a baking tray, smoothing it down with the back of a spoon. Bake for 25 minutes, while you make the caramel. To do this, combine the evaporated milk, sugar and butter and bring up over a gentle heat, whisking for a few minutes, until nicely thickened and smooth – you want it the consistency of dulce de leche. Now add in the chilli and tamarind and whisk to combine, cooking for a couple more minutes – I tend to add a pinch of salt here as well, but not too much as the evaporated milk already has a saltiness to it. When you have a thick, glossy caramel that’s utterly irresistible, remove it from the heat and try and save some for your shortbread.
- After 25 minutes, remove the shortbread from the oven and allow to cool. Once it’s cool, pour over the caramel and smooth it across the shortbread with a spatula or palate knife so you have a nice thick, even layer.
- Melt the chocolate in a bain marie (a heatproof dish set over a pan with an inch of boiling water in the bottom), and then pour this over the caramel. Allow to cool, then set in the fridge for at least 2 hours. I know, the wait is PUNISHING. Once set, remove from the fridge, lift out of the tray by the edges of the baking paper, and cut into squares. Don’t worry if the chocolate shatters, this will just create cracks for the caramel to escape through. Immediately box some up for a friend/loved one who needs a sweet treat, and make yourself a pint of tea or a short, strong coffee to enjoy with the rest. Thank me later.
