Millionaire's Shortbread, Take One

Malcolm and I were hoping to make a fougasse this weekend, but the GBBO version called for bread flour and the King Arthur Baking version called for dry milk, both difficult to find. So that will have to wait for a future bake. Instead I decided Millionaire's Shortbread would be fun to try.

The shortbread portion was easy enough. We got that in the oven and baked then started on the caramel while that was cooling. The kids and I all took turns stirring, though some of my control/anxiety comes out on things like this and I was constantly itching to take back over the stirring since I really wasn't confident in the kids' ability to actually stir properly and avoid burning. I was so worried about it burning and about following the instructions exactly (which just talked about getting it to thicken and not so much about the color), that I forgot to use my brain and previous knowledge about what color caramel should be. And didn't really make that realization until it was already poured on top of the shortbread and in the fridge. But it at least seemed thick enough!

Final product. Shortbread probably could've used a slightly longer bake as well, just to brown a tad more. Caramel definitely needed more caramelizing. Texture is right and it tastes fine, but doesn't have a very strong caramel flavor at all.

So now we have a 9x13 pan of very rich cookies that are just okay. Ryan and everyone had looked at me like I was out of my mind when I suggested we just make an 8x8, but apparently they weren't realizing how rich these would be. 

I also think the shortbread layer could be thicker to better balance the quite thick caramel layer. I'm thinking next batch we use the same amount of shortbread in the 8x8 pan and then halve the caramel and chocolate amounts, which should give us a shortbread layer that's twice as thick with caramel and chocolate layers as they are here.