{january daring bakers: nanaimo bars}

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

This is my first time participating in the Daring Bakers challenge and I absolutely loved it! The challenge had two parts to it: 1) bake homemade graham crackers and 2) use the graham crackers you made to create Canadian Nanaimo Bars (pronounced Nah-nye-Moh). We had the option to make this a gluten free recipe but since all-purpose is what I had on hand, I opted for it.

More pics after the jump


recipe source:: 101 cookbooks
The graham crackers were delicious on their own and I foresee some s'more making in the near future. I didn't have a rolling pin so I improvised with a wine bottle to roll out the dough. Next time, I will just go buy a rolling pin.


recipe source:: City of Nanaimo
Vegan middle layer:: Everyday Dish TV
We used the graham crackers in the bottom of the 3-layer Nanaimo Bars. Coconut and walnuts were also supposed to be in the bottom layer, but since I had neither and am not a fan of coconut, I left them out. For the middle layer I used the vegan recipe with some modifications. I left out the tumeric and used soy milk and real butter instead. I also added a couple tablespoons of creamy peanut butter to the mix. Nothing beats peanut butter and chocolate.

The Nanaimo bars were delicious and ended up being fairly easy to make. They were incredibly rich so I cut all the pieces very small and sent them with John to work to share the wealth.