Nanaimo Bars for Winter Solstice

baking

I’ve gotten a few requests for this recipe over the years, but I never take the time to type it up. Well, here it is. Unfortunately, you will have to do the metric conversions yourself (if needed) as I didn’t have the time to test it both ways tonight (Google is helpful, of course, but I never want to convert without testing).

Enjoy!

First in pictures:

Improvised double boiler for the butter, cocoa powder, sugar, and vanilla.
Graham wafer crumbs and finely flaked coconut.
Add the egg to the warm chocolate/butter mixture. Stir quickly so the whites don’t start cooking (as they did when I paused to take this picture).
My base turned out rather buttery, so I might have measured slightly wrong (or not stirred it enough?) Either way, it will still be tasty (and hidden from view).
Custard powder and milk.
Fluffy custard flavoured butter icing.
Spreading the butter icing over the chilled base.
Try to make it somewhat smoother than I managed. I suck at working with icing.
Melt butter with chocolate. I always want to up the amount to 4 ounces of chocolate, but then it cracks when I cut it into squares. So this seems thin, but it works.
Top with slightly cooled chocolate, but work quickly. Mine started thickening on me (again pausing to take the picture might have been the issue).
Chill until the top is solid.
For a party, or a gift, I would tidy the edges. But for me these look perfect!

 

And here is the PDF for download.

Enjoy! I am. 😉

Happy Solstice!

ETA: based on your comments/concerns since I posted this last night, please let me add a plea here to NOT substitute ingredients if you don’t really, really need to. There are A LOT of bad Nanaimo Bars in the world. A LOT. In fact, I rarely like any. Most are sickly sweet or too mushy or the chocolate is inferior. And yes, I understand I’m difficult to please but we should all be that difficult! LOL

So here is my addendum (with links, please let me know if the links have gone stale).

Graham Wafer Crumbs = Graham Cracker Crumbs. I use Honey Maid (Amazon.ca link) (Amazon.com link) (Amazon.co.uk link) but I don’t think the brand is important. They are simply called wafers in Canada.

Custard Powder. I use Bird’s Custard Powder (Amazon.ca link) (Amazon.com link) (Amazon.co.uk link) but again I don’t think brand is important. But please, please don’t sub instant pudding. Or if you do, know that the consistency and taste will be completely different.

Published by MCD

I'm a writer. I also bake. And knit. A lot. My novels are available anywhere ebooks/paperbacks/audiobooks are sold online. Find more info on my blog: http://www.madebymeghan.ca

Published

12 thoughts on “Nanaimo Bars for Winter Solstice”

  1. Meghan, thank you so very much for sharing. These look amazing and perfect for a Christmas Eve get together! Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year to you, Michael and the fur babies

    Reply

  5. I’ve just discovered your books and hence your recipes. This recipe is almost exactly the same as one that my mother made rather a few times over the years! The only difference I can find other than conversions from cups to grams for NZ/Aus, is the base has dark chocolate instead of cocoa and has chopped pecans through it. Oh and wheatmeal biscuit crumbs, graham crackers aren’t readily available here. I think I might need get my bake on this weekend!

    Reply

    1. I always omit nuts in most of my baking. I’m not a fan. So the original recipe probably had nuts in it. Also I should use grams/ml in Canada but I switch back and forth. 😊

      Reply

      1. Depends on the flavour for me, I don’t mind pecans. I’ve just seen on the same page of my mum’s book, there’s another slice almost identical which has added peppermint flavour to the custard icing layer, hmmmm chocolate and peppermint 😊

  6. Pingback: Happy Holidays 2018 | Made by Meghan

Chat with MCD!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.