Back in London with Salted Macadamias
Tuesday, November 09, 2010And so we're back in the land of the grey cloud, the persistent drizzle and the dry humour. Oh England, have you missed us?
Just before we left SA I had a measles scare - we were at the Waterfront and suddenly I turned spotty (with purple spots, no less!). G and Marc were both very polite and sat through lunch with me looking like spotty mcspot, and then we hurriedly went to the chemist who advise immediate citirisine. Long story short, I had all the symptoms of German Measles, but they went away fairly quickly and effortlessly on the day we had to fly. Ho-hum.
We had a very teary day at the airport and I wasn't much in the mood for taking photographs. Thank you all who came to see us (and the 'planes) off. For once, G slept for a good six hours, and I didn't get a wink in before breakfast. I did watch two very silly movies - Ramona and Beezus and Get Smart. I managed to vent my tear ducts all through the first film, after a dinner of roasted chicken breast and stir-fried vegetables, then somewhere again before breakfast of chicken sausage and scrambled eggs. We landed at 6ish am, had some coffee at Costa, and then began our Great Trek home which took us almost three hours because most of the lines were down (thanks TFL!).
On the upside, stress and general disdain always sends me into a baking frenzy so I googled a fancy-pants recipe and decided on Salted Macadamia Millionaire Shortbread. I've included the link to the recipe on the Waitrose website, but just in case it doesn't work or something happens to the site, I'll reproduce it in full below.
Let me just say, I'm very pleased that I stumbled upon these. They are life-changing and delicious and fool-proof and whaddya doing still reading this and not baking?
Salted Macadamia Millionaire Shortbread - yum!
Ingredients
50g caster sugar
175g plain flour
150g roasted and salted macadamia nuts, roughly chopped
Toffee filling and chocolate topping
115g salted butter
100g caster sugar
200g condensed milk (approximately ½ a tin)
2 tbsp golden syrup
200g milk chocolate, chopped
50g white chocolate, melted
Method
- Preheat the oven to 150°C, gas mark 2. Grease a 23cm square cake tin and line with greaseproof paper. Rub the butter, sugar and flour together in a bowl until it forms a very stiff, crumbly dough. Press into the tin and press the nuts on top. Bake for 30–35 minutes until lightly golden. Cool.
- Meanwhile, make the toffee by slowly melting the sugar and 100g butter for 10 minutes until thick and bubbling. Add the condensed milk and golden syrup and bring to a gentle boil, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat and stir the mixture vigorously for 5–10 minutes, scraping the sides and bottom of the pan, until the toffee is thick and golden. If brown patches start to appear, add a drop of condensed milk. Pour over the shortbread and set for 20 minutes in the fridge.
- Boil 4 tbsp water in a pan, take off the heat and stir in the milk chocolate with the remaining butter until melted. Spread over the toffee. Chill for 2 hours. Drizzle melted white chocolate from a teaspoon. Cut into squares with a hot knife.
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