Easy Millionaire Shortbread Bites Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are common mistakes when making shortbread? ›

The most common mistakes when making shortbread are over-working the dough, and incorporating too much flour. The less you work the dough, the more crumbly and melt-in-your-mouth your shortbread cookies will be.

If your caramel is too soft, you didn't do it for long enough, so should definitely be kept in the fridge. You want to use a good quality pan if you can, as some pans have a very thin base.

Piercing the shortbread with a fork is not only for decoration, but it's meant for more even baking. Poking holes in the shortbread allows the heat to penetrate the cookie, hence more even baking. Notice I'm using powdered sugar here.

This Millionaire's Shortbread is the perfect trifecta: Sweet simple, crisp shortbread, rich chewy, homemade caramel, and thick dark chocolate ganache. Sprinkle everything off with a scattering of sea salt and you have a decadently rich treat that lives up to every penny of its lucrative name.

Greasy mess: Extra butter means more fat, making the dough greasy and difficult to handle. Spreading like crazy: Cookies lose their shape, spreading thin and flat instead of staying nice and round. Uneven baking: The excess fat can burn easily on the edges while leaving the center undercooked.

A good way to check to see if the shortbread is baked is to see if they are set - they will be slightly firm around the outside, and may be just beginning to turn golden around the edges. You want to keep them nice and pale so make sure your oven is running at the temperature it says that it is.

There are a variety of reasons why the shortbread could be damp underneath but it is most likely that either the dough is being pressed out too thickly, the pan is not metal so heats up too slowly, or the oven temperature is too high causing the top to brown before the bottom has cooked sufficiently.

However, most often it isn't old butter that's the culprit when it comes to bitter shortbread, but rather duration and temperature. Bake Club claims that over-baking, or even baking shortbread on too high a heat, can cause the butter to burn, leading to a sour or pungent aftertaste in the cookies.

After shaping the cookies, don't rush to the oven! Instead, chill the dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or so (overnight is OK, too). A short stay in the fridge will firm up the cookies and solidify the butter. This will help keep them from spreading too much.

Sugar provides a fast source of energy. There are rarely any artificial additives. Cons: Shortbread is a weight watcher's nightmare because it is extremely high in saturated fat and calories. Saturated fat is the 'bad' fat which is linked to artery-clogging high cholesterol and heart disease.

Should you chill shortbread dough before rolling? ›

Use your hands to form the dough into a flat disc, then wrap in plastic wrap and place in the fridge to chill for at least an hour. Roll the dough out onto a lightly floured surface until it is ⅛-¼” thick.

What's the difference between millionaire shortbread and billionaire shortbread? Millionaire shortbread has a caramel centre, billionaire shortbread has a decadent salted caramel centre. Can shortbread biscuits be frozen? Yes shortbread cookies and biscuits (even with caramel and chocolate) freeze perfectly.

Caramel shortbread, also known as caramel squares, caramel slice, millionaire's shortbread, millionaire's slice, chocolate caramel shortbread, or Wellington squares is a biscuit confectionery composed of a shortbread biscuit base topped with caramel and milk chocolate.

Traditional shortbread comes in either rounds, fingers or “petticoat tails” – delicate triangles cut from a larger circle, made to resemble the petticoats which medieval ladies, like Mary Queen of Scots would have worn. The larger circle shape was the most common historical form, and is said to represent the sun.

If it's too warm, the butter and sugar cannot properly cream and the cookies will taste dense. Many shortbread recipes call for cold butter worked into the dry ingredients and that gives you a wonderfully flaky cookie but if not mixed properly, the results can be inconsistent.

Begin checking at the tail end of the cooking time. Undercooked shortbread will be doughy and chewy. Slightly overcooked and it will become chalky, brittle and hard.