Nannie RaRa

Millionaires shortbread

4th Nov 2025 Nannie RaRa

The whole family adore millionaires shortbread. I only usually make it on special occasions as it takes a while to do, but it is so worth it.

The recipe I use is based on Caramel cakes in the book Cakes and Desserts published by Octopus in 1978. I have made this into a gluten-free recipe, but the only difference is the flour in the shortbread base. If you want to use ordinary flour just replace the gluten free with the same quantity of SR flour.

Ingredients

Shortbread

5 oz butter
4 oz caster sugar
10 oz gluten-free self-raising flour

Filling

4 oz butter
4 oz caster sugar
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 large can condensed milk (397g)

Topping

6 oz chocolate

Method

Grease a 12 x 9 inch swiss roll tin. Set the oven to 180 C.

To make the shortbread, cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl. Then work in the flour – I used a spoon to begin with, then my fingers, rubbing the ingredients together as though making a crumble.

Sprinkle the shortbread mix into the swiss roll tin, spreadly evenly and press down.

Put this into the oven for 15-20 minutes until the shortbread is golden. Take out and leave to cool.

For the filling, place all the ingredients into a saucepan. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, stirring occasionally. Now turn up the heat, stir continuously while it comes to the boil and boil for five minutes. You might notice dark pieces floating where the sugar has caught on the pan. These are fine. The mixture will thicken and darken as it boils.

Remove from the heat after five minutes and leave for a minute before spreading onto the cooled shortbread. Leave it to set.

Break the chocolate into pieces and place in a pyrex bowl or jug. I use Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate as it is my favourite but any chocolate is fine, either milk or dark. Place the jug over a pan of hot water until the chocolate has melted.

Spread the chocolate over the set filling. Mark it into portions, leave to cool and the chocolate to harden.

millionaires shortbread with chocolate topping

Using a knife cut the millionaires shortbread into portions – I usually cut it into 8 x 6 pieces – and remove carefully from the tin. This can be frozen.

Enjoy!

nature

Garden visitors

3rd Jun 2025 Nannie RaRa

Jenny Wren makes visits to my garden, but is not that often seen although I hear her loud noise quite a bit. I managed to capture a short video of her hunting for food amongst the parsley.

The great spotted woodpecker has been visiting my garden regularly over the years and eats from the peanut feeders I put up.

For the past few years the woodpecker brings its young along to show it where to find food by feeding it from the peanuts. Here are a few videos of this happening.

The young great spotted woodpecker is sitting on the branch of the oak between the two peanut feeders.

This is a more distance shot of the great spotted woodpecker feeding its young.

The young woodpecker moved to a different tree. The adult great spotted woodpecker had to bring the food over to it.

painting

Family portraits

15th May 2025 Nannie RaRa

I’ve been busy painting more watercolours – this time portraits of my family.

Instead of painting pictures of them, I’ve been painting items that describe them. It’s been an interesting exercise, finding out what makes a person. As I’ve been painting them, I’ve shown the portrait to the sitter at each stage, and they’ve always come back with extra items to add. I’ve loved doing them.

Here are the finished articles starting with me.

Daughter

Son

Son

Grandson

nature

Birds by the estuary

4th Mar 2025 Nannie RaRa

Near to me is an estuary and we get many migrant and native waders and other water birds. I’ve taken a few short videos recently.

First up is an oystercatcher walking along the edge of the river looking for food.

Next is a curlew, it wasn’t far from the oystercatcher and again was looking for food.

There are a flock of brent geese that have been around all winter, roosting overnight in the field behind me before travelling down to the water for the day. These few were swimming on the water.

This is one of the egrets that live at the estuary. It had chased off another egret, then stood around before taking flight.

nature

Nearby feathered friends

25th Dec 202411th Jan 2025 Nannie RaRa

I’ve recently taken short videos of birds near me.

I have peanut feeders in my garden that hang from an oak tree. There is a holly bush next to it so the birds can hop in and out to safety, ready for when the sparrowhawk appears.

I usually have blue tits, great tits and great spotted woodpeckers on there, but recently some starlings have appeared. I also have magpies and jackdaws in the garden and the jackdaws have tried the feeders as well.

There is a ruined church just down the road, and a flock of finches have taken up residence in the trees and copse. You can hear the linnets chattering away as you pass by. I’ve also seen chaffinches, gold finches, greenfinches, yellowhammers and brambling.

There is a river estuary a short walk away with a nature reserve on the opposite side of the river. The birds don’t know about the reserve so they come on my side of the river as well. There are dunlin, teal, oystercatchers, avocet, knot, godwits – both bar tailed and black-tailed – and many others.

I’m not very good at telling which bird is which, so if I have named them wrongly in the videos, do let me know.

And lastly here is a flock of Brent geese. They travel from the farmer’s field where they overnight down to the estuary. You can always hear them coming.