Millionaire Cupcakes

This is a variant on a millionaire shortbread recipe that takes my Granny’s Shortbread recipe and adds caramel and chocolate to it and puts it in cupcake moulds.

Before you start

You will need

• A set of kitchen scales
• 12-15 cupcake moulds.
• A large mixing bowl
• A table knife
• A baking tray
• A medium sized sauce pan.
• A wooden spoon
• A teaspoon.
• An airtight storage container.

Ingredients

• 300g plain flour
• 250g butter, 150g for the shortbread and 100g for the caramel.
• 75g castor sugar
• 100g molasses
• 397g tin of condensed milk
• 250g milk cooking chocolate

Instructions

1. Mix the 300g flour and 75g sugar together.
2. Cut the 150g of butter in to pieces.
3. Using fingertips rub the butter into the flour/sugar mixture until evenly distributed (almost like bread crumbs)
4. Press the mix into each cupcake mould, ensuring the base and sides are well covered but leaving the centre ready for adding the caramel later.
5. Put each shortbread cup on a baking tray, and
6. Bake at 160°C for about 40-45 minutes until the shortbread is a pale golden colour.

While the shortbread is cooking, prepare the caramel filling

1. Put the 100g butter, 100g molasses, and 397g of condensed milk into the sauce pan.
2. Slowly on a low heat, allow the sugar and butter to melt while stirring constantly with the wooden spoon to ensure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan.
3. Once the sugar and butter are melted, turn up the heat to medium/high and bring to the boil. Again stirring continuously to ensure that it does not stick to the pan.
4. Once boiling bring the head back down to low and stir constantly until the shortbread is ready.

Put the caramel filling in the shortbread cups.

1. Pour a small amount of caramel into each shortbread cup, leaving about 2mm for the chocolate topping.

Add the cooking chocolate.

1. While the caramel cupcakes are cooling, melt 250g of cooking chocolate.
2. Pour an amount of melted chocolate on top of each cup cake sealing in the caramel. Use a tea spoon to push the chocolate out to the sides.
3. Allow to cool
4. Place in to an airtight container.

Notes

Cupcake Moulds: I use reusable silicone moulds because they are pliable enough that the cupcakes can be removed easily once set, but not so flimsy that it makes it difficult to build up the shortbread exterior of the cupcake.

Molasses: I use molasses because I find that unrefined sugar isn’t quite as sickly sweet, if you have a sweet tooth you can replace that with caster sugar.

Cooking Chocolate: For the cooking chocolate you can use dark chocolate to offset the sweetness of the caramel, or go for white chocolate to make it extra sweet.

Caramel Preparation: The caramel filling usually takes about 25-30 minutes to prepare, so you can have a short break before starting this.

Serving suggestion: As a dessert, it can be placed in a bowl with warm custard.