‘Millionaire’ shortbread

My flapjack recipe (and yes it’s imperial measurements, but it’s from an old book)

– 15oz oats

– 9oz butter (i.e. a whole block)

– 6oz sugar

– 6oz syrup

…so one-third of the thing is sugar, which should be ample gratification of your rush needs.

I am partial to a flap jack, but that’s a bit too spartan for me. I like some dried fruit in there, cranberries, raisins, bits of chopped apricot that sort of thing.  Maybe a few pumpkin seeds? Or a pinch of cinnamon?  C’mon man, you know post war rationing has ended right?

I mean, of course you’re right. That is the basic recipe, to which I should have added “and a good handful of whatever dried fruit, nuts or seeds you might like, and/or a generous teaspoon of ground ginger”.

Not cinnamon though, we’re not savages.

I’d never had Millionaires’ Shortbread until I went on holiday to Scotland. The first place I had it was a cafe near the Great Glen Way north of Fort Augustus. I really liked it. After that, I started to see it in a few places in Kent, but it was never as good. I guess you are always chasing that first, best buzz.

For Cougar

Leg end, thank you.

it’s not quite so absurd and amusing until you see it all listed like that.

It was supposed to be amusing, I’m glad it landed.

My flapjack recipe

Here’s mine.

125g premium rolled porridge oats

125g chopped crap oats

150g salted butter

75g golden syrup

75g soft brown sugar

Put the sugar, butter and syrup in a pan and heat until it’s liquified. Take it off the heat, stir in the oats. Press it into a lined baking tray.

For chewy flapjacks bake at 175’C for 25-30 mins, till browned. For crunchy do the same but at 190’C. Cut into slices whilst still warm.

If you’re weight watching I did the math, 12 slices comes out at about 200kCal per slice.

we’re not savages.

Well. You might say that, but one can only go by the evidence*

*heretical attempts to reorder the recognised hierarchy of baked goods and recipes from some ‘dig for victory’ pamphlet which suggest a pantry full of powdered egg, turnips and camp coffee.

I did the math

[involuntary eyelid twitch of rage..]

*heretical attempts to reorder the recognised hierarchy of baked goods and recipes from some ‘dig for victory’ pamphlet which suggest a pantry full of powdered egg, turnips and camp coffee.

You’ve clearly never tried my turnip coffee cake.

Joking aside, millionaire shortbread should be treated with the same caution/suspicion as ordering fish and chips from a pub menu – occasionally it is truly excellent, but most of the time it’s a bit shit and you wish you’d ordered something else.

Agreed, but I think you can tip the odds more in your favour if you are in an independent cafe where everything is home made rather than a chain.

As an aside. I will occasionally order fish and chips in a pub, but one thing I will never order from a pub menu is curry.  I really like curry!

millionaire shortbread should be treated with the same caution/suspicion as ordering fish and chips from a pub menu – occasionally it is truly excellent, but most of the time it’s a bit shit and you wish you’d ordered something else.

I would agree with that. But when it’s good, it’s very very good.

he said it’s mpg* was 16km per litre. I think that’s quite good. My brain will never be able to convert to that though.

You can broadly convert km to miles as 3/5.  16*3=48, let’s round that and say 50. /5=10. 10 miles to the litre.

You can broadly convert “per gallon” to “per litre” by multiplying by 4. (A US gallon is a bit less than 4L, a UK gallon closer to 4.5L,) 10*4.5=45mpg.

I ran that through an online converter and got “16 km/L = 45.19696 mpg (UK)”  so I’ll take that as a reasonable approximation.

You can condense these steps into one by multiplying by 2.8, that’s harder to do in your head but “multiply by 3” isn’t a back door off. 16*3=48mpg. So (km/L – 1) times three is on the money.  It’s probably at least as accurate as manufacturers’ published figures which assume a spherical car in a vacuum on a rolling road.

(In any case, I think the Metric equivalent measurement is actually litres per 100km rather than km/L, which hurts my brane.)

which hurts my brane

Yes, thank you. Mines a bit sore now too.

Those shortbread recipes are missing rice flour from the mix. Trust me it makes a melt in the mouth biscuit as theres less gluten to get toughened and like icing sugar it’s really fine.

and as if by magic..

There’s a recipe for Millionaire  Shortbread in the Glasgow Herald magazine today.

They must have been reading STW last week 😉

My aunt(s) in scotland made it back in the 60s

Ive no idea what we called it then

I notice that we are on page 4 and apart from a totally unjustified, and in fact plan wrong, attack on cooking chocolate, I notice that there has been no discussion of the type of chocolate required.

It should of course be plain chocolate with a reasonably high cocoa content, to balance out the sweetness of the caramel. Ideally Callebaut or Valrhona, but at a pinch supermarket dark cooking chocolate can be used, or Menier as long as you aren’t boycotting Nestlé. Cooking chocolate like this is preferred because it is easier to work with and less likely to develop a bloom.

Bought some millionaire shortbread* today looking forward to scoffing some only to find (to my disappointment) it was flapjack. Still nice but not shortbread. The end.

*failure to read past first word on label and xray vision packed up, sigh.

@onewheelgood I think you are misunderstanding what is meant by “cooking chocolate”?

There’s a specific low quality product that’s designed to be a cooking ingredient and never to be just used as chocolate, and it is awful.

a totally unjustified, and in fact plan wrong, attack on cooking chocolate

Cooking chocolate is absolutely grim. An attack on it is wholly justified and I am surprised it wasn’t banned for domestic use along with creosote, a similar product with about the same culinary utility.

Cooking chocolate is absolutely grim. An attack on it is wholly justified and I am surprised it wasn’t banned for domestic use along with creosote, a similar product with about the same culinary utility.

The thing is though, what makes an authentic Millionaire shortbread. It’s a Scottish recipe dating from the 1950s that you’d make with ingredients from the village corner shop. Proper millionaire shortbread should be made with Scotbloc  – forget percentages of coco solids – ‘chocolate flavoured with a chocolate appearance’ is what it should say on the packet. We used to refer to its as ‘Chiglet’ something so divorced from real chocolate you couldn’t even use the same letters to spell it.

Making Miilionaire Shortbread with proper chocolate is like making haggis with saltmarsh fed lamb fillet. 🙂

I mean check out the small print on the Morrisons label ‘no artificial flavours’ – rejected!

@maccruiskeen and that’s exactly why there are so many people on this thread who’ve obviously only experienced shite millionaire’s shortbread and so find it mediocre. It’s all about the details.

Also your comparison with haggis is void. Haggis is actually improved by the fact that it’s minced heart and lungs, whereas millionaire’s shortbread is not improved by using cheap ingredients.

Wise words Kramer. We are amongst heathens.

If this thread was sponsored by the millionaire shortbread marketing board then it was successful…but now I am looking back at the selection and wishing I’d chosen the flapjack or the peanut butter brownie.

whereas millionaire’s shortbread is not improved by using cheap ingredients.

Quality ingredients aren’t improved by making Millionaires Shortbread with them.  I know we live in a ‘gourmet burger’ era of throwing expensive  ingredients in a bun and thinking thats ‘cooking’ and all that. But if you’re paying for something made with  good chocolate why not expect people to  make an effort and do something good with it, more than the sum of the parts and all that. Not just the parts piled on top of each other..

Good millionaire’s shortbread takes a lot of effort. It’s all in the details, the correct recipe and method of making the shortbread, and the correct ratio of shortbread to caramel to chocolate. You can tell when someone’s made the effort to get it right.

Cooking chocolate is absolutely grim. An attack on it is wholly justified and I am surprised it wasn’t banned for domestic use along with creosote, a similar product with about the same culinary utility.

and even that Morrisons bar that you showed has 50% more cocoa in it than Cadbury’s Dairy Milk (30% vs 20%). The general standard of chocolate in this country is appalling, although still rather better than that found in the US. But just like everything else, in a capitalist society you can buy shit cooking chocolate, or good cooking chocolate – it’s up to you, or your budget.