If you have a sweet tooth, this is for you. Sweet strawberry jam sandwiched between our Homemade Shortbread base and the champagne flavoured white chocolate top. Strawberries and cream with Champagne in a bake. Perfect for Wimbledon finals week, if it was on.

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Summer celebration

I’ve been thinking of various ideas for celebrations across the year but summer is actually a difficult one. There isn’t really a traditional celebration in summer. Not like Easter, or Father’s Day, or Valentines Day. I’d need to be creative.

I searched for what happens in June and the first thing that came up was the Wimbledon Tennis Championships. It’s not on this year of course and this in itself doesn’t inspire ideas for sweet treats. Grass and sweat is not inspirational in the world of cakes. But what is synonymous with Wimbledon is strawberries and cream. Sweet, succulent strawberries and cream. Not just any old cream either. Whipped cream. That sugary, thick, vanilla flavoured cream. All of this washed down with a glass of Pimms or Champagne. Perfect!

How to bring it all together?

Firstly, the strawberries and cream. They are the stars of the show, so they need to be the main flavours. My Raspberry and White Chocolate Blondie has been a big hit. My first thought was to do something like this. However, I tried it and it didn’t work. The flavour of the strawberries is just not strong enough for a blondie.

What else could work? I went searching for ideas and immediately came across strawberry shortcake. The shortcake thing is kind of American and it wasn’t really what I was looking for. Shortbread, however, is more my kind of thing and it still works. My Homemade Shortbread has the vanilla like flavour of cream and it is a solid base for a tray bake, as in Millionaire’s Shortbread.

The strawberry filling was difficult. Fresh strawberries are not really an option, unless sold the same day, and they wouldn’t fare well in the post. They also don’t have the strength of flavour that I needed. After a few trials, I settled on strawberry jam. The flavour is sweet and the strawberry is concentrated. It also tends to stay where it is put.

All I needed now was the topping. This would need to add a more creamy flavour to the whole thing. Taking inspiration from Millionaire’s Shortbread again, I thought chocolate would do the job. White chocolate is perfect and fits with my core principle that everything is better with chocolate.

So that was the strawberries and cream done. What about the other bit?

Champagne or Pimms

What about the Champagne or Pimms. I think that Pimms is a lovely drink but could be a bit too complex for a bake that has two clear and wonderfully indulgent flavours already. The addition of a fruity, spicy flavour wouldn’t compliment the strawberries, shortbread and chocolate, I thought. Champagne, however, would be perfect, if I could make it work. The subtle but distinct apple and citrus flavours of champagne would be lovely.

Getting the champagne into the bake is a bit of a challenge. The only thing that I know of that tasted of Champagne is Champagne. I searched the internet and found a Champagne flavouring, usually used in cupcakes, sweets, etc. Unconvinced, I bought some. Tasting it convinced me. Adding this to jam or shortbread wouldn’t really work, so the chocolate was it. I tried it and it was wonderful. It not only added the champagne flavour but took some of the sweetness off the chocolate.

Strawberries and cream millionaires shortbread

There it was. A strawberries and cream variation on Millionaire’s Shortbread. A jam sandwich with shortbread on the bottom and white chocolate on the top, with a hint of champagne. A little trial with some friends showed that it was good. Not everyone got the Champagne flavour, but we put that down to taste buds and age. The younger guinea pigs got it immediately.

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Look out for it appearing in the “Select contents” options for ordering online.

Is it only for millionaires?

Is Millionaire’s Shortbread only for millionaires? Luckily not. This one is for everyone, but keep it quiet or there’ll be none left for those of us with a more modest income.

What is in it?

What’s in it? Pure extravagance, that’s what. Well, that and our Homemade Shortbread, our own caramel recipe and pure Belgian chocolate. The shortbread is light and buttery and a great base for the next layer. A thick layer of lovely, sticky, sweet, creamy caramel. The gorgeous bitterness of a dark chocolate tops it off. Finally, for those that like their bakes to not only taste good but look good, milk and white chocolate marbling used for decoration. What more do you need?

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Look out for it appearing in the “Select contents” options for ordering online.

The shortbread base of our bakes is usually quite a substantial piece. We don’t do things small. Each portion of shortbread is two of these, when selected as part of a Mix & Match box. More than enough to enjoy with a whole morning of coffee.

Each piece of buttery shortbread is decorated with our logo and dusted with sugar. Perfect with a morning coffee or afternoon tea.

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All of the products are made to my recipes and everything is baked by me. So, my products are the definition of handmade and I know them because they were made by my own fair hand.

We are based in the North East of England and we make indulgent and mouthwatering tray bakes and brownies. What more can I say? Well what about some history?

Where do we start?

I’ve been making brownies for around twenty years. The baking genes must’ve come from my mother, as she was an accomplished home baker too. She took pride in her baking and was regularly making cookies, cakes and even bread for anyone that asked.

I can’t even remember why I started making brownies though. It was probably for a coffee morning at work or a request from someone that needed a cake for something similar. Anyway, I made one based on a recipe I had found. I removed the nuts, as I didn’t fancy them, and my Triple Chocolate Brownie was born. Since then the Triple Chocolate Brownie, with a few tweaks, has grown up and matured into my core product.

Triple Chocolate Brownies

I’ve tried varying the ingredients slightly and even tried expensive and more modestly priced chocolate. In my opinion it makes little difference. The taste varies a little but the texture and eating experience stays the same. Regardless of what I change, everyone still loves them. The conclusion I’ve come to is that it’s the feeling when eating them, more than the taste, that makes people want them.

Selling them

Still I never thought to sell brownies. They were homemade and I just made them as a favour or for pleasure or for special occasions. I’d been told several times that people would pay for them. They would say “you could sell those” or “what are you doing working here if you can bake like that?” I never really thought about it and I had a full time job after all. Until recently that is.

After recently becoming unemployed, I realised that the 9 to 5, the rat race, the daily grind, whatever you want to call it, wasn’t for me. I wanted to do something else. Something creative. I discussed my situation with friends and, funnily enough, one of them said, as a bit of a joke “artisan baker is popular these days, so unless you can do something like that you’ll have to get another job”. I looked at him sideways and said “I can, and do, bake things”. Serendipity?

So, I thought about starting a business. Could I sell these things? Who to? I tested the idea and, surprisingly to me, there were potential customers out there. This could be possible I thought. However, surely I couldn’t make a living selling one product. I needed some others. What would be easy to do and the least risky? Flavours of course.

What to sell?

I began considering flavours. Mint was my initial thought. I knew that I liked minty chocolate of all kinds and this would be good. However, some people aren’t as keen on minty chocolate. How can this be I thought. Anyway, I asked around for other ideas and orange came up. Of course, I thought. What’s better that chocolate orange, apart from chocolate mint. So, I started working on some recipes, which I recently tried out with some willing guinea pigs.

The flavoured brownies were made to subtly different recipes. They went down well. I expected a favourite to establish itself but quickly found that different people had different favourites. I’d have to do both.

Gluten free

As soon as I’d shown that I was willing to vary the recipe, another select group appeared. They were a group that I’d never really considered, as they couldn’t eat my brownies. These people could not eat anything containing gluten. “Could I make a gluten free brownie?” they said. Mmmm, I don’t know, maybe I thought. It was a challenge and I was up for it. More care was required but it turned out to be relatively easy.

The future

I now had a portfolio of recipes and the potential for many more. Maybe I could make this work. Let’s see. What Bakes and Brownies is will change, I have no doubt, but I’m sure it’ll be fun.

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