Millionaire’s Tart

Brand: Lidl Deluxe

Cost: ~£2

Found at: Lidl

“Sophie Wessex is ‘exactly what the royal family needs’ because she ‘just gets on with it’ and doesn’t take on projects that are ‘very glamourous,’ according to a royal expert.” said the notification from the Daily Mail that popped up on the “news” app of my very affordable Motorola phone.

“Good for her!” I thought – and considered my opinion very generous. I could just as easily have felt personally attacked, because while the wife of the Queen’s youngest son was making free lunches for NHS workers and opening up a wing of a field hospital, I was sitting in my suit jacket and pearl necklace, eating a “millionaire’s tart” at ten in the morning. I had decided to spend the day dressed up, after a solid six weeks of sweatpants, and I decided to eat dessert in the morning because my new outfit had me feeling particularly glamourous. And the “millionaire’s tart” is an appropriately glamourous desert. It consists of a thick shortbread crust filled with a layer each of caramel and chocolate ganache and this particular tart even has a light dusting of gold-colored sugar to complete the aesthetic.

Never mind that the jacket was from a second-hand shop, the pearls were fake, and the millionaire’s tart was still frozen from its time in the freezer section of the local budget grocery store – at that moment, with the taste of rich chocolate ganache in my mouth, I felt myself very much Sophie Wessex’s peer:

“Well done all round.” I thought, and I wondered for a moment if I, in my largess, should also volunteer.

“No, no.” I decided, reaching for another slice of £2 pie. “I’m much too glamourous for all that.”