Review: Millionaire’s Shortbread and the Chocolate Lover’s Afternoon Tea

Xak and I try not to eat too much candy during the year. However… the day after a major holiday is a perfectly valid reason to indulge. You would not believe the amount of money you will save buying Reese’s bunnies the day after Easter, or Hershey Kisses in green, red, and silver wrappers after Christmas ends. This is when you can snap up a bag for 50-75% of the cost… just because the exact same candy is in a different shape or the wrappers are a different color!

Of course, nothing beats Halloween. You can acquire an assortment of discounted candy in one bag without having to walk out of the store with a full cart to get what you want. Because of this, Xak and I look forward to November 1st since this is the time to stock up on the bags that contain fun size Twix bars.

If you’re not familiar with a Twix bar, it’s a caramel, shortbread, chocolate candy bar. Typically when you buy it full size, you get two in one package. This might be one of the reasons I like it: I like thinking I’m getting a good deal (yes, I’m a victim of marketing).

However, November 1st is a long time to wait to satisfy our Twix fix. While Twix bars are readily available at any grocery store, convenience store, or local Target, Xak and I love taking the hard route. Why pick one up in less than 5 minutes when you can spend hours trying to make them yourself???

The Quest for Homemade Twix Bars

As I started looking up “HOMEMADE TWIX BAR” recipes online, I had a memory of seeing something called a “millionaire’s shortbread” on Great British Bake Off. Although not exactly the same as a Twix (for example, a Twix is completely coated in chocolate), it was pretty close. As I switched gears to searching for “easy millionaire’s shortbread” I happened to stumble upon a recipe by my favorite food blogger, Nagi from RecipeTin Eats, for a Caramel Slice, which is what millionaire’s shortbread is referred to in Australia.

As I read through the detailed Caramel Slice recipe, it looked suspiciously simple. Maybe even too simple. 🤨 This tends to be my reaction whenever I read one of Nagi’s recipes. Every recipe on her blog looks like I can make it, which makes me automatically think I am missing a step. After watching the video though, it actually looked like it might be as simple as I read. I started to get very excited.

Would “Twix bars” made by my own hands be in my hands before November 1st?

Ingredients and Shortbread Base

Since I’ve made so many RecipeTin Eats recipes, I’ve learned to trust the process. Caramel Slices start out with a shortbread base, so I expected it be similar to what I typically make for lemon bars: butter, flour, sugar, and salt. However, there was a surprising addition to this shortbread: coconut. I was a little confused, but Nagi has never led me astray. Trust the process, I reminded myself.

The base came together quickly, and I stuck it in the oven just as the recipe advised. After baking for the appropriate time and removing it, things seemed to be going as planned (so far).

I let it cool on the counter and moved onto the next step: the caramel layer.

Caramel Layer

Caramel seems a little daunting. I’ve watched my fair share of experienced bakers totally screw up caramel by crystallizing it, burning it, turning out to pale, etc. Since caramel is ⅓ of this recipe, it would be pretty bad if the caramel wasn’t absolutely perfect. However, one of the reasons I felt confident with this recipe is the addition of the condensed milk. This removes the need for a candy thermometer to check if you’ve achieved the precarious temperature of perfection (versus one degree off, becoming burnt).

In the past, I’ve had good results making caramel sauce for my apple crisp using similar ingredients. Just swap out cream for the condensed milk. I figure this caramel with condensed milk would hopefully be just as tasty and more appropriate for baking instead of drizzling over a scoop of ice cream plopped on top of hot baked apple crisp.

The caramel called for a precise measurement of butter and brown sugar before putting it on the stove and letting the heat (and a whisk) do its work.

Once the caramel finished on the stove, it gets poured on top of the shortbread base and then baked for a little longer. Although the caramel luckily didn’t burn or crystallize, I had some serious doubts about the appearance of it and hoped that I didn’t break my streak of tasty Nagi recipes.

This process actually reminded me of the cracker candy I like making around Christmas time. Yum! Maybe I could make those as a backup…. 🤔

Chocolate Layer

Any time I make a recipe with chocolate chips, I always ensure there are enough chocolate chips for both the actual dessert and for me to do several rounds of taste testing. However, unlike cracker candy where you use solely chocolate chips, this recipe calls for mixing chocolate chips with vegetable oil in the microwave to soften. The thought of eating a spoonful of oil and chocolate chips doesn’t sound too appealing so we were in no danger of me sneaking in a few bites.

As I dutifully microwaved the bowl 4 times (as suggested in the recipe), pourable chocolate was beginning to form. For the last step, pouring the chocolate ontop of the caramel level and then refrigerate it.

I had no idea what the layers would look like after I cut into it, but all I could do was just trust the process.

The Finished Caramel Slice

Once the bars were cooled, Xak and I gathered around excited for the cutting ceremony. If this turned out like garbage, there was always November 1st for our discounted Twix bars.

Luckily, these bars turned out excellent! Perhaps the caramel layer could be a little thinner and a little darker for aesthetic purposes, but the taste of these were fantastic. Another successful RecipeTin Eats recipe in the books. 😊

Bonus: The Chocolate Lover’s Afternoon Tea

I seriously will find any reason to have an afternoon tea. Even better is when I can come up with a theme for the tea (example: Star Wars!) For this tea, I wanted to make sure that the caramel slice / millionaire’s shortbread would be the star of the show along with some very special tea I bought for Xak.

The Nutty Chocolate Assam Tea

Xak’s first afternoon tea experience was at the Grand Floridian in Disney World back in 2019. When asked to place his order for a pot of tea, he chose something that combined two of his favorite things: chocolate and hazelnuts. The blend was Twinings Nutty Chocolate Assam Tea. 

During our visit, Xak and I drank our respectful tea pots (me with English Breakfast, of course), and we vowed to come back again so we could both have some Nutty Chocolate Tea. Unfortunately, in 2020, The Grand Floridian tea room temporarily closed and is still closed to this day. The specific tea blend is nowhere to be found in the United States. Xak switched over to a replacement tea (Stash Decaf Chocolate Hazelnut) which is good, but doesn’t fully replace the original Nutty Chocolate tea.

After my efforts to track down the tea at the Twinings store in Disney failed, I decided to take matters into my own hands this year (only 5 short years later….) and order the tea from the UK, hoping it was the same blend and as good as Xak remembered. Xak was overjoyed and was delighted to re-taste it during our special chocolate lovers tea.

Savories

Since we were being adventurous in other courses, I wanted to make sure we had some familiar, reliable food to fall back on just in case things turned out poorly. This meant having our standard cucumber sandwiches, and chicken salad sandwiches (another RecipeTin Eats classic). Both are these are so good that if everything else was awful, we would still be happy.

For the third savory, I wanted to do something a little different from a sandwich and something more appropriate for our chocolate theme. Beef can go really well with chocolate, so I hear. While I had no intention of dusting the meat with cocoa powder, we rarely have beef in our afternoon teas so this seemed like a good occasion to incorporate some.

Mini Yorkshire Puddings

My first time having a Yorkshire pudding was at Elephant and Castle, a British pub chain in North America. It was part of the Sunday Roast entree which is served with roast beef and mashed potatoes. One preparation of a Yorkshire Pudding is to create a batter of flour, egg, milk, salt, and pepper and then pour it into a piping hot oil filled baking pan. It’s quite similar to an American popover. I’ve made mini Yorkshire puddings in a mini muffin tin based on Prue Leith’s recipe at one of our previous teas before and they were delicious.

While my Yorkshire puddings might not be authentic, they still were yummy along with the horseradish sauce I made for the top. The savories were a hastily assembled for this tea, but everything still tasted really great!

Raspberry Scones

Since we had chocolate representation throughout the desserts, we decided to find something that complemented chocolate for the scone course. I feel like we had quite a few options. We could go with a savory scone that had cheese or maybe some chili. However, who can deny pairing strawberries and raspberries with chocolate? Xak decided that raspberry scones could be a great addition to our tea and found a recipe from Tea Time magazine.

The scones weren’t the same as Xak’s cream scones which are our preference for tea, however both of us were still happy we tried something new (with some clotted cream and raspberry jam).

Desserts

This is where I wanted to lean in hard with the chocolate theme. There are so many chocolate desserts, and while it would be great to have a chocolate cake, I wanted to make sure the desserts weren’t too heavy, but still

Chocolate Drizzled Coconut Macaroons

Xak and I had some leftover coconut macaroons (different from the cookie, macarons) that we bought from the store. I actually really love these at tea time and look forward to when they’re served at tea rooms. Although the ones we had bought were plain, in order to fit the theme, we decided to melt additional chocolate to drizzle on top of the macaroons. Delicious!

Chocolate Hazelnut Kisses

The second dessert was a little more labor intensive, but perfect for our themed tea. Since chocolate hazelnut is one of Xak’s favorite combinations (just like the tea), we wanted to incorporate the flavor combo in an appropriate tea time dessert. While researching scones for this event, we also found a recipe for Chocolate Hazelnut Kisses also from Tea Time Magazine.

These were meringues dipped in chocolate and encrusted in hazelnuts. The preparation for the meringues were similar to pavlovas which we’ve made multiple times, and we were also excited for yet a new type of gluten free dessert we could share with our gluten free family members. They tasted quite nice and were a great light dessert for the top of our tray.

Overall, our chocolate lover’s afternoon tea was excellent! The tea was just as great as Xak remembered and I’m so glad that he had a chance to enjoy it again. I am so happy we made these millionaire’s shortbreads. This is definitely a top 5 dessert!