The best millionaire's shortbread...ever

A visit to Brick Lane on a Sunday is a bewildering affair. So many things to eat...where do you start? A trip to one of the bagel shops or Bangladeshi restaurants is the traditional thing to do.

But the various markets are adding more and more options. American, Argentinean, Caribbean, Chinese, Ethiopian, Japanese, Malaysian, Mexican, Moroccan, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, all competing to display their wares in the most enticing way and attract the crowds of hungry young things.

There are so many cupcakes, brownies and other baked goods that it's nigh on impossible to choose. At the Brick Lane Market Cafe they have Danish pastries the size of your head, alongside home-made cheese-cake and carrot cake.

But my heart was won by Molly Bakes (pictured above). We bought a piece of millionaire's shortbread and a salted caramel chocolate brownie (pictured below). We ate them, picking up every last crumb, and then went back to get some more. I felt I should have chosen something different the second time, but the first choices were so good that I was happy to eat them again. Molly Bakes specialise in cupcakes, which did look enticing, but I'm not a huge cupcake fan. There's a salted caramel cupcake too - salted caramel being very much a flavour of the moment, and understandably so. It combines with chocolate to a devastatingly delicious effect.

Actually, I'm not a huge millionaire's shortbread fan normally - I find them a bit sickly, much like most cupcakes - but this one was exceptional. Hefty, good quality shortbread, then a layer of firm caramel almost shockingly thick, then finally a layer of decent chocolate, which was cocoa-rich enough to balance out the sugar and caramel in the layers underneath. (You can see it in the front of the picture above).

As for the brownie, it was equally good: dense, chocolatey, with a ribbon of soft, unctuous salted caramel winding through it. Texture, that all-important thing in a brownie, was just right: somewhere between cake and truffle. Happiness on a fork.

You can find where to get hold of Molly Bakes' cakes here (Harvey Nick's sells their cupcakes, though I didn't find this out till later). I got mine from outside the Backyard Market in Brick Lane, where they are to be found every Sunday.

Salted caramel brownie