Millionaire's Shortbread Bars

It was very quiet in my house last Saturday night. The reason? Both boys were at my mother's and I had the house to myself to make my famed chocolate cake pops for my niece Zoha's birthday party the following day. Unfortunately I couldn't get hold of any cooking chocolate and so I had to nix that plan. I made something I had made on Azhaan's birthday last month - Millionaire's Shortbread Bars.

It's hard to describe these bars without going into raptures because they're so, so good! There's a crunchy shortbread base at the bottom, topped with a layer of dulce de leche (cooked condensed milk) and further topped with melted chocolate.

For small amounts of chocolate, I don't mind using Bourneville Dark Chocolate because it's pretty good and can be used as cooking chocolate as well. So armed with the ingredients, I set out to make these delicious squares which were a great hit the following day at the birthday.

I found the recipe at Joy of Baking and I followed it exactly. I did notice a couple of changes from the first time I made it though. For instance, the dulce de leche was creamier and more evident in this one. The picture in the Joy of Baking website shows the second layer to be almost caramel coloured but I couldn't achieve it.

For the dulce de leche, I cooked the condensed milk in the microwave at a very low power, around 50% for the first four minutes and then reduced to 40% for another 8 minutes. It's important to beat the dulce de leche when you remove it from the microwave so it becomes smooth and creamy. And yes, it's preferable if you cook the shortbread before this step so that the shortbread is cooling while the dulce de leche is cooking. Pour it on the shortbread and spread it immediately or it will begin to harden.

For the layer of chocolate, I simply melted two large bars of Bournville over a double boiler and poured it over the dulce de leche and left it to set for sometime in the fridge. When it was half set I marked lines on the chocolate and then put it back in the fridge. Later that night I removed the shortbread bars and realised I couldn't remove the first piece without causing cracks on the chocolate surface. So I made a narrow line on one of the edges and removed a piece from it so that I had leverage to remove the other squares. And the narrow edge belonged to moi! All the itsy bitsy pieces of chocolate and dulce de leche covered shortbread was MINE. And I ate it all as I cut out the rest and then when I went to sleep that night, I couldn't get any sleep because of a butter and chocolate overload in my system.