Great British Baking Show Caramel Week Recap: Treacle Tarts, Paul Hollywood’s Ginger Millionaire’s Shortbread And Nougatine Sculptures, On Netflix November 13
Caramel Week, the quarterfinal of The Great British Baking Show’s Collection 14, arrives on Netflix on Friday, November 13. Five bakers were left, and the Technical was Paul Hollywood’s millionaire’s shortbread, which he built on a ginger shortbread base.
In Britain, where the show is The Great British Bake Off, Episode 8 aired on Channel 4 on Tuesday, November 10. Channel 4 sums it up as “a caramel quarter-final” of treacle tarts, millionaire shortbread and nougatine sculpture showpieces. Twelve bakers started the series, and it runs ten episodes, so this was the last week before the semifinal.
Our Caramel Week preview covers when to watch and what each bake is. This is the episode itself, bake by bake.
The three bakes
Treacle tarts. Treacle tart is a British classic filled with golden syrup, a thick, honey-like sugar syrup.
Technical: Paul Hollywood’s Millionaire’s Shortbread. Millionaire’s shortbread stacks a shortbread base, a layer of caramel and a chocolate top. Think of it as a homemade Twix bar. The show’s official recipe calls Paul’s take “a grown-up version.” Ground ginger goes into the buttery shortbread, the caramel is salted to taste with flaky sea salt, and dark chocolate goes on top, scattered with milk, white and caramel chocolate chips. It’s cut into 10 bars, and the site rates it Easy.
American bakers trying it at home will meet a few British terms. Caster sugar is superfine sugar, cornflour is cornstarch, double cream is close to heavy cream, and the 20 cm square tin is about an 8-inch square pan. The recipe also calls for a candy thermometer, which it calls a sugar thermometer, for the caramel.
Nougatine sculptures. Nougatine is an almond brittle: nuts set in hard caramel. Channel 4 calls these the week’s “sculpture showpieces.”
Caramel cookies to bake while you watch
The preview rounds up five of our caramel and shortbread cookies. Here are three more ways in.
- Twix Cookies: the closest thing we have to a millionaire’s shortbread you can eat in one hand. A flattened brown sugar cookie is topped with melted caramel candies, then a circle of milk chocolate.
- Almond Crunch Cookies: a nod to the nougatine. Almond flour and almond extract go in the dough, and each ball is rolled in sliced almonds before baking.
- Butterscotch Pecan Cookies: melted butterscotch chips are beaten into the dough with brown sugar and a little cinnamon, and chopped pecans are folded in last.
Catching up? Our Free-From Week recap covers Episode 7.
What’s next
Episode 9 is the semifinal. Netflix says new episodes of Collection 14 arrive every Friday until the finale, which puts it on Netflix on Friday, November 20.