Rosemary Caramel Billionaire Shortbreads

It seems like 2015 has passed in a flash and I am already getting ready for the Christmas parties despite it being summer just two seconds ago. Luckily, a benefit of it now being December is that you can eat all the treats you like and blame it on the Christmas spirit. These biscuits are essentially the same as your classic Millionaire shortbread, but with a little extra zing. I laced the caramel with fresh rosemary to give the biscuits an aromatic flavour, and added sea salt to dark dark chocolate which freshens up the sweetness. They are still really rich though, so I would recommend cutting into small squares and serving as a little after-dinner treat or at a party.

Ingredients

For a 20cm x 20cm tin

For the shortbread

310g plain flour

250g unsalted butter

110g icing sugar

splash of milk

For the caramel

400g condensed milk

150g unsalted butter

100g golden syrup

4 sprigs of fresh rosemary

For the chocolate

300g dark chocolate (>70% cocoa solids)

1 teaspoon sea salt

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1. Grease the tin and line with baking parchment. I am normally quite lazy about lining my tins with baking parchment, but I would really recommend it here because you are going to be using caramel, which is super sticky at the best of times.
2. Preheat the oven to 180•C.
3. Cream the butter and icing sugar together to make the start of a biscuit dough. Once it it light and fluffy, beat in the flour a bit at a time until you have a dry, slightly shaggy dough.
4. Bring the dough together with your hands. You may need a slight dash of milk (but only a really, really small amount) to help the dough form.
5. Spoon the dough into the prepared tin and flatten out until well packed in and level. Bake for ~20 minutes until the dough is starting to firm up. The dough should still be relatively light in colour when you removed from the oven, and will firm up whilst it cools so don’t panic if you think it’s not done yet.
6. Leave the biscuit to cool before you start to make the caramel.
7. Pluck the individual leaves from the rosemary sprigs and finely chop. I find this easiest to do with scissors, but if you have a food processor this might work as well.
8. To make the caramel, melt 150g of butter in a saucepan over mid-high heat. Stir in the condensed milk, golden syrup and rosemary. Continue to stir whilst the mixture thickens, then remove from the heat.
9. Once the caramel sauce is cool pour over the shortbread and level out. Leave to set in the fridge for about an hour until a firm surface has formed.
10. Once the caramel has set, melt the dark chocolate over a pan of boiling water. Pour over the top of the caramel. As it begins to cool, you could add a slight pattern by zig-zagging a fork lightly over it, or something like that- use your imagination.
11. Before the chocolate has completely set, sprinkle the sea salt over the top. I chose to sprinkle mine in relatively large crystals to give distinct mouthfuls of saltiness, but if you want you can grind the salt more finely.
12. Leave the shortbread to set overnight in the fridge, before slicing into small ~5cm x 5cm chunks.