Tag: Nanaimo Bars

Nanaimo Bars for Winter Solstice

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.