This Peanut Butter Millionaire Shortbread is a healthy take on the classic millionaire’s shortbread. A shortbread base with a peanut butter “caramel” layer, topped with dark chocolate. These are oil-free, refined-sugar-free, vegan and gluten-free! They are such a yummy treat – no one will believe that it’s healthy! They’re also really easy to make and you only need 5 ingredients!
Ingredients & Substitutions
I wasn’t joking when I said you only need 5 ingredients. I don’t think it will be necessary to make any substitutions as I’m sure you have all of these ingredients right now!
- Oat Flour: For the shortbread base you will need oat flour, you can buy this in the shop or make your own by blending your favourite oats – it literally takes 10 seconds. Use gluten-free oats if necessary.
- Maple Syrup: You couple use agave, sugar-free syrup or honey
- Peanut Butter: You can use any nut or seed butter to make them nut-free.
- Dark Chocolate: You can use dark chocolate (make sure it doesn’t contain any milk) or any vegan chocolate
- Plant Milk: This is optional, I add it to my melted chocolate to make a ganache, but you could omit this and just use the melted chocolate as is.
- Salt: Optional but highly recommended to counteract the sweetness!
How To Make Peanut Butter Millionaire Shortbread
This healthy millionaire’s shortbread is honestly so easy to make, but to make it even easier for you I will walk you through the steps, and I’ve also made a recipe video!
Jump to Video- Start by making the shortbread base: add your syrup and nut butter to a mixing bowl and whisk until smooth. Add in your oat flour and mix until all the ingredients are evenly distributed (get your hands in there if necessary).
- Grab a loaf tin, cut a long strip of baking parchment paper and place it in your tin. Transfer the shortbread dough into the tin and press it down into the bottom. Make sure it’s compact and as flat as possible. You can use your hands, a spoon or a spatula – I like to use a cake slice as it gets into the corners of the tin. Once compact – pop in the oven and bake for 10 minutes. You don’t have to actually bake this if you don’t want to, I just find that it makes the flavour richer and also allows the shortbread to stick together better. If you’d prefer not to bake it, just press it down and pop it in the freezer.
- To make the caramel: combine the remaining peanut butter and syrup, add in some salt (salted caramel – YUM!) and mix until smooth (see video for consistency). Spread the caramel onto your base. Sprinkle with something crunchy if you like: chopped nuts, chocolate chips or cacao nibs! Place the tray into the freezer.
- Melt your chocolate – I use the bain-marie method: bring some water to a simmer in a small saucepan, place the chocolate in a small bowl into the pot of water (be careful not to get any water into the chocolate!). You could alternatively melt the chocolate in a microwave, and stop and mix the chocolate every 20 seconds to make sure it doesn’t burn!
- Once the chocolate has melted: remove from the heat and add in a splash of milk and mix until smooth to make a ganache.
- Remove the shortbread from the loaf tin and slice with a sharp knife.
- Spread the ganache over the top and put it in the fridge to set.*
*you could alternatively spread the chocolate over the top before slicing, but I like it coming down the sides of the bars!
I slice mine into 8, but you could cut them smaller to make millionaire’s shortbread bites!
How To Store Peanut Butter Millionaire Shortbread
These bars stay good for three days at room temperature (if you don’t eat them all before then!?). Keep them in an air-tight container.
You can keep them in the fridge for up to a week.
OR keep in the freezer for up to three months (my personal favourite!)
Looking for more healthy cookie recipes? Try these:
BAKING IN GRAMS
All of the recipes I create are tried and tested a few times until it has been perfected. My goal is to develop recipes that are simple to make and easy to follow so that anyone can make them – even if you’ve never baked before!
One very important thing that will ensure that you get the best results is to measure your ingredients by weight! I recommend purchasing a kitchen scale, they are very affordable and it will honestly change your baking game for good! Not all measuring cups are made equally – for example, a cup of flour to me weighs 120g, but for you, it may be anywhere between 100g and 200g – that’s a BIG difference!
If you don’t have a kitchen scale yet, you can use this Ingredient Weight Chart as a guideline to convert the ingredients to help you!
Now – dust your apron off and get baking! X
Peanut Butter Millionaire Shortbread
Ingredients
Shortbread Base
- 150 g Oat Flour or blended oats
- 75 g Maple Syrup
- 60 g Smooth Peanut Butter
Peanut Butter Caramel Layer
- 120 g Smooth Peanut Butter
- 50 g Maple Syrup
- Pinch of salt
- Cacao nibs or chopped nuts optional
Chocolate Ganache Layer
- 80 g Dark Chocolate
- 1-2 tbsp Milk soy, almond, oat, cashew etc.
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 180°C / 350°F / 160°C fan and line a loaf tin with a strip of baking parchment paper.
- Add the peanut butter and maple syrup for the shortbread base into a mixing bowl and mix until smooth. Add in your oat flour and mix until all is combined.
- Press the dough into the bottom of the loaf tin until compact and flat. Bake for 10 minutes.
- Make the peanut caramel whilst your shortbread is baking: combine the peanut butter, maple syrup and salt for the caramel and mix until smooth – it should be thick (see video).
- Spread the caramel onto the shortbread crust and sprinkle over the cacao nibs or nuts if using. Place in the freezer to set.
- Melt your chocolate. Once melted – add in your milk and mix until smooth, it should be smooth and runny.
- Remove the shortbread from the tin and slice into 8 bars.
- Spread the chocolate over the top as well as some flaked sea salt and pop in the fridge to set.
PSA for anyone reading this, melted chocolate seizes and becomes unusable when you add almost any kind of liquid to it, skip the milk when you melt it and if you reaaaaally need to thin it out then just use a small drop of oil instead.