Caramel Shortbread

I have never been a big fan of caramel shortbread, the thick sickly caramel layer always left me feeling a little queasy. It is however one of my Sister's all time favourite sweet treats and she has been nagging me to bake it for ever.

I mentioned to the boyfriend that I was considering baking caramel shortbread (or as he calls it Millionaires shortbread) and within an hour of the words leaving my lips he had nipped to the shop to buy condensed milk and chocolate. So, being the wonderful girlfriend and sister that I am, I set about baking.

I loosely followed this BBC recipe and the recipe on the side of the Carnation Condensed Milk tin.

For the shortbread:
250g plain flour
75g caster sugar
175g butter, softened

for the caramel:
1 tin of condensed milk
55g butter
55g light brown sugar

For the chocolate:
200g chocolate (I used milk, but any chocolate will do.)

I started off by combining the flour and sugar in a bowl and rubbing the butter in to form a breadcrumb-like texture. You could use a kitchenaid or food processor for this if you like.

Then knead into a loose crumbly dough. Press into a square tin lined with greaseproof paper. Make sure you get it right into the corners and it is evenly distributed.

Bake at 180C for 12 minutes, or until it is a nice golden brown. Leave to cool in the tin.

Next make the caramel. Pop the condensed milk, sugar and butter into a saucepan and bring slowly to a boil. Once it start boiling turn it down and simmer for 5 minutes or until the caramel thickens slightly.

Once the shortbread has cooled pour the caramel over the top and leave to cool completely.

Once the caramel is set and cooled simply melt your chocolate and pour it over the top, using a spatula to get it right to the edges.

Pop the whole thing in the fridge and let it set completely.

Once set, chop into whatever sized pieces you fancy!

This recipe made two very thin 8X10 pans of shortbread, if you are a shortbread fan I would just make one tin but I didn't want to caramel layer to be too thick on mine, plus I wanted it to go further and last longer.

As part of the frugal meal planning kick I am on I am not buying biscuits from the supermarkets, so instead I am baking them myself at the weekend for pack lunches through the week. These are the perfect pack lunch treat!

What pack lunch box treat do you bake?

Meal Planning Monday - 05/03/12

Monday has rolled around again. I had such a busy weekend I have hardly had time to sit down let alone plan or shop. Luckily last weeks shop was such a good one that we have plenty of food to tide us over. I simply popped to the local shop for fresh bread, milk and cat food.

This weeks meal plan is quite loose, these are what I plan to have but with a lot going on this week the meals may get shuffled around;

Monday: Chicken Kievs with boiled new potatoes and sweetcorn.

Tuesday: Sort yourself out night

Wednesday: Beef lasagne with garlic bread

Thursday: I am eating out so left over lasagne for boyfriend.

Friday: Either homemade fish and chips, or chilli jacket potatoes.

We have plenty of tinned soup, cereal, and sandwich stuff for lunches so it will be yet another cheap week for us. I shudder to think how much money we used to spend on food, we used to go to the supermarket every Sunday without planning and just pick up £50 worth of food; half of which would go off before we ate it. So wasteful!

I am looking forward to this months No Food Waste Challenge from Turquoise Lemons, if you are interested in cutting down food waste you should check it out, some great ideas!

Sunday Lunch - Eating out at La Gabbia

This weeks Sunday Lunch post is a little different. I really didn't cook much last weekend as I was out and about and also cleaned my house from top to bottom. There really is nothing worse than cleaning your kitchen to only mess it up all over again.

So I decided to share my Saturday lunch with you. We went to a lovely event at La Gabbia in Ouseburn. The event was called Knit and Gabbia and was a lot of fun. It was basically a knitting club of sorts, I met some great people and knitted up a storm!

It was £2 which included a cup of tea and a great little goodie bag, which had a fabulous kit for making this little duck creme egg cosy! Too cute!

The goody bag also had a raffle ticket inside and to my surprise we won! We got 2 for 1 on pizza at La Gabbia as our prize so we decided to stay for lunch.

I had a cajun chicken, red onion, yellow pepper and capers on my pizza, my sister opted for a meaty spicy number, we shared some chips and garlic mayo.

At £10.95 per pizza it would probably have been too pricey for a lunch time, but as we had the two for one, how could we say no? Although the pizzas were HUGE so one between the two of us would of been plenty.

I would definitely recommend La Gabbia, it had a lovely atmosphere and relaxed vibe. The main restaurant room looked gorgeous, will be going back for an evening meal in the future.

I promise to get myself back in the kitchen next Sunday and normal service will resume.

Baking Mad with Eric Lanlard Update.

I am super excited that the new series of Baking Mad with Eric Lanlard is starting on Channel 4 on Monday 5th March.

I found out today that MY episode will be aired on 15th March at 12:05pm on Channel 4.

So set your recording devices to see me bake up a storm, mess up the simplest part of my recipe and above all have an absolute blast!

Shortbread Army - Coming to get you...

There has been a lot of celebrations and happy occassions this month from Christenings to Engagements, to Births and New Jobs. Lots of reasons to be happy and lots of excuses to bake something delicious to celebrate!

Some close friend of ours had their first child this month, a gorgeous little boy called Harry. I had planned on baking some lovely blue iced cupcakes to take around when we first met him but a particularly hectic week meant I just didn't have the time so the standard baby present was bought instead. However, the second time we popped in to see them I decided to bake a few easy biscuits to take round and enjoy with a nice cup of tea.

My shortbread recipe literally could not be easier and I managed to rustle them up in just 30 minutes after work. I rummaged through my cookie cutter drawer and decided to go with little gingerbread men shaped biscuits, they sort of look like little baby boys right?

Little Boy Shortbread

180g plain flour

120g butter, softened (Must be full fat proper butter)

75g caster sugar (plus extra for dusting)

0.5 tsp orange blosson water

Fresh vanilla seeds

Cream the butter, sugar vanilla and orange blossom together for 3-5 minutes until light and creamy. Then gradually add the sifted flour until a dough forms. It might be quite crumble but wrap it in some clingfilm and refrigerate for around 10 minutes (if in a hurry, longer if not)

Roll out to the desired thickness. My Valentines Shortbread was rolled quite thin and had a lovely snap to it. These I rolled much thicker which made for a lovely crumbly soft biscuit.

I also got my letter press out and decided to stamp his name into the biscuits as an extra touch. The press itself is great! I used it at Christmas to make these super cute fondant iced biscuits. I had never tried stamping straight into dough before but it worked really well!

I bought the stamp off ebay for around £6

I wrapped 10 of the little Harry biscuits in a nice plastic presentation bag from Lakeland and tied it with a blue ribbon. They went down really well and tasted bloody lovely.

I am a big believer in homemade gifts, what do you bake for special occasions or celebrations?

Stem Ginger and Cinnamon Teacakes

Ever since Ruth over at The Pink Whisk posted a picture of her homemade buttered teacake on twitter a few weeks back I have been desperate for one. I mean seriously, you cannot think about a nice hot buttered teacake without getting serious cravings!

I remember when I was at college the corner shop across the street used to sell teacakes for 50p. They put them in one of those paper bags with the plastic front so by the time you got back to the college building it used to be a bit on the soggy side, which in my opinion made it even better! Pure, unadulterated, melted buttery goodness. Needless to say most days included a little trip to the shop for elevenses...