Tag Archives: baking

Creme egg millionaire’s shortbread

It has become tradition that at Easter I bake something creme egg related. Previously I’ve made cupcakes and brownies and this year I have created creme egg millionaire’s shortbread. These sweet bites have a homemade creme egg filling, instead of caramel, and a chocolate topping covered with mini creme eggs.

These biscuits aren’t too complicated to make but they need to be made in stages so will take a while to make. This is mostly waiting for the fillings to cool and set so it looks more impressive before you eat it. It’s also incredibly decadent but creme eggs are only around for a few weeks a year.

creme egg shortbread first

Ingredients

This amount of mixture will make roughly 20 biscuits and I was using a 30 cm by 25cm tray.

For the shortbread you will need:
250g of butter
50g of sugar
250g of plain flour
125g of cornflour

To make the creme egg filling:
2 tablespoons of butter
190g of icing sugar
60ml of golden syrup
A tablespoon of milk (if needed)
Half a teaspoon of vanilla essence
A pinch of salt
A few drops of yellow food colouring

For the chocolate topping:
200g of milk chocolate
Some creme eggs to decorate — the mini ones are best

Recipe

Start off by making shortbread, this is the base for the biscuit and is the only bit of baking that needs to be done. You can use a food processor for this bit, it won’t be as messy and quicker than doing it by hand.

First crumb the flour and the butter until you get something that looks like breadcrumbs. Then mix in the sugar and the cornflour until it all comes together in a ball of dough.

shortbread Now you need to wrap the dough in clingfilm and leave in the fridge for about half an hour. This will allow the dough to firm up a bit and become easier to mold and shape.

After it has chilled remove from the fridge and place in a lined tray. Pat the dough down until the bottom of the tray is completely covered and it looks roughly equal. Pierce the dough with a fork to stop the shortbread from rising. Put in the oven for 30-40 minutes at 170C until the shortbread is golden.

Leave the shortbread to cool while making the creme egg filling. It is tempting to buy a lot of creme eggs and just spoon out the filling but it is easier to make your own. Beat together butter and icing sugar until you have butter icing. Next add the golden syrup, vanilla and a pinch of salt and mix. If you think at this point you need it to be liquid like add a tablespoon of milk.

Pour three quarters of the creme egg filling over the cooled shortbread. Put this in the fridge and allow the filling to set. Meanwhile put a few drops of yellow food colouring in the remaining creme egg filling. This will make it look more like the filling of a creme egg.

creme egg fillingWhen the white filling has set remove from the fridge and pour over the yellow part of the creme egg filling. Try and marble it so it looks more like eggs. Then leave the completed filling to set in the fridge for a couple of hours. If it isn’t setting quickly put it in the freezer for half an hour.

The final layer of the millionaire’s shortbread is the chocolate. Melt the chocolate and leave it to cool, it still needs to be melted but if it is very hot it could melt the creme egg layer. Pour the chocolate and spread to cover the top. Then take some mini creme eggs, unwrap them and break them up. Decorate the top layer of chocolate with the eggs and leave in the fridge to set.

creme egg shortbread

And here’s the finished shortbread.

creme egg millionaires shortbread

Chop the shortbread into about 20 squares and enjoy it sometime over the Easter break. If you do try it let me know you think. Or if you fancy trying something else creme egg related have a read of my cupcake and brownie recipes below.

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creme egg brownies ad

Baked by Eileen

On Food for Thought I like to feature a variety of food businesses, this means chatting to not just the people who run cafes and restaurants but also people who run their cookery businesses straight from their kitchen. That’s certainly the case for Baked by Eileen who makes homemade cakes using local and seasonal produce.

Baked by Eileen

Eileen makes her cakes for the local farmers market in Lincoln and supplies some of the independent cafes around the city. It’s only become a recent venture for Eileen and she’s surprised that her business is so popular after it just started off “as a germ of an idea”.

Also on this week’s show I chat to Eddy Gadd from the Lincolnshire Beekeepers Association about looking after bees.

I’ve not been enjoying the bees inviting themselves into my house via open windows during the recent sunny weather, however, it might have got you thinking about looking after bees properly. In that case Eddy has plenty of advice for people starting to look after bees as well as explains the benefits of looking after bees.

Listen to the latest episode online here:

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Next time on Food for Thought I talk to the new owners of the Angel Coffee House in Lincoln and chat to Ben and Alex behind the food review website Snap it. Taste it. Blog it. You can listen to the show on Siren FM on Wednesdays at 2pm.

Christmas cake conundrum

It may only be the early days of December but I have started to plan Christmas. This is after months of purposefully ignoring it. Now I have succumbed to the yuletide spirit I am ‘urming’ and ‘ahhing’ over what Christmas cake to make. I am not a fan of the traditional fruit cake, so if I am going to make a cake then I am going to make sure that it is something I really like.

Last year was the first time I made a Christmas cake. I made a chocolate cake, with the sides covered in a white chocolate buttercream and the top was melted white chocolate. It wasn’t the prettiest cake ever made, but it tasted pretty good.

Now I am in a bit of a conundrum as to what to make this year. Initially I wanted to make four smallish cakes which spelt out xmas. Then the cakes could have been different flavours and decorated individually. However, my Mum said that these types of cake can be deceptively hard. So back to the drawing board.

The next bit of inspiration is from my advent calendar. I may be 22-years-old but I still make sure to get an advent calendar. To add to the childishness of this I went for one with Percy Pig on. Instead of milk chocolate the daily treats are white chocolate and raspberry flavour, so that they are piggy pink. My boyfriend then suggested that this could be good combination for our Christmas cake.

Whatever I decide to do I am going to try make the cake look prettier than last year’s attempt. Not quite sure what to do yet, but picked up some festive stencils from Lakeland so will make sure that they get used.

I also fancy making a yule log, but don’t want to overindulge too much. So, dear Internet, what ideas for Christmas cake do you have that are not the traditional fruit cake?