Chocolate, caramel, and shortbread oh my! Tulie Bakery in SLC makes a wonderful shortbread with dark caramel and dark chocolate, it is like a gourmet twix. For a debate beginning of the year party, I decided to try recreating this. With some research, I found out it is known as millionaire shortbread. For the shortbread crust, I used a recipe from the Miette cookbook, and pressed the dough into a square metal baking pan and baked it.
For the caramel, I also used the Miette cookbook recipe for caramel, but I took the temperature instructions with a grain of salt since I live at a high altitude. (A temperamental candy recipe made the exact same way at the same temperature at sea level and high altitude can yield drastically different results. Waiting to reach the temperature recommended at sea level can leave you with candy that is too hard. With caramels, if you heat it up too much it will start to reach a soft then hard ball stage and become difficult to eat!) Once the caramel was ready, I poured it over the shortbread in the same foil-lined pan and let it cool and set. I then melted a mixture of Ghiradelli semi- and bitter- sweet chocolate (I have since stopped using Ghiradelli because they use slave labor) and made a fairly solid ganache with butter which I poured and smoothed over, then added flaky sea salt. The caramel was a bit hard, so it was difficult to cut once it set, but when I brought them to the party they were a hit! My debate coach especially loved them, and was urging me to give him the recipe so his wife could make them. I said I would, but warned that it was a difficult process.
