I’ll look around some more tomorrow - I checked a Giant today and they didn’t have it in the Jello / Pudding aisle (that’s where it would be, right?). There is a huge Safeway just next door to the Giant; I’ll try there tomorrow. I looked at the stuff from Amazon but it came from a third-party seller and it was going to cost 10 bucks to ship to me. Uh, no thanks.
While I’m thinking of it - how is the name pronounced? I’ve been saying (and thinking ) NAN ih moe, to rhyme with Eskimo, but maybe it’s nan EYE mo? something else?
Several years ago I went searching for a recipe and came across one that had in its description something along the lines of “the more chocolate the better, right? Right!”
Base
1 c. melted butter (2 sticks)
2 eggs
1 1/2 c coconut
1/2 c. granulated sugar
13.5 oz box graham crackers, crushed
1 c. chopped walnuts
1 c. cocoa
Middle layer 1/2 c. soft butter
2 tsp vanilla
4 tbsp custard powder
2 c powdered sugar
3 tbsp milk
Icing
8 oz semisweet chocolate
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
3 1/2 tbsp butter
Base: Mix together melted butter and sugar. Add cocoa, then eggs. Beat until smooth. Add graham crumbs and mix thoroughly. Add coconut and walnuts. Press into 2 9-inch square pans. Refrigerate while making middle layer.
Middle Layer: Cream together italics. Blend in milk and sugar. Spread evenly over base.
Icing: Melt everything. Cool slightly and spread onto chilled middle layer. Chill in a refrigerator, but cut into pieces before the chocolate on top has completely hardened. Store in the refrigerator.
If your store has an import aisle, you might look there for the custard powder, or even the baking aisle. Grocery stores put stuff in strange places.
Do chill them between layers. You could make the bottom layer with chocolate wafers (like the outside of an Oreo), and maybe cut back on the cocoa. Or not.
Market Street in Colleyville (Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, and some other Teas locations) used to make Nanaimo bars, but discontinued them. Bastards. One of these days I’ll have to make my own.
Success! (in finding the custard powder, that is) - I checked 2 other grocery stores, then finally found it at Safeway. I’d been looking near the pudding mixes but finally saw it buried among things like bread machine mix . Fortunately the other ingredients won’t be too hard to find!
One other question: if anyone has any links to a version that doesn’t include nuts in the base, I’d be grateful - these look yummy but my son can’t have them, and it’s possible there are kids in the classroom who can’t either, so I’d be willing to make an alternate version as well.
I’d be surprised if you found a really good nut free nanaimo bar recipe – they’re pretty integral to the whole concept. You could increase the coconut and graham cracker crumbs proportionally to cover the loss of the walnuts, though. I’d lean more towards the coconut than the crumbs, since the crumbs are more absorbant.
The coconut would actually also be a problem since those are nuts also (at least, we’ve been advised to avoid it for my nut-allergic kid and a friend who has nut allergies can’t eat coconut either).
Maybe some sort of chewy chocolate cookie recipe would do for the base.
No, those are Nanowrimo bars, and they have wildly varying recipes, textures, and quality. Must be the missing “a” and extra “owr”
For those of you have had the real Nanaimo bars: would a chocolate cookie crust such as the one here be tolerable? I’m guessing that the filling would soften it up enough so that it could be cut into bars, even if it isn’t the chewy coconut/graham concoction in the real recipe, and it would meet the “nut-free” requirement as well as (possibly, depending on the cookie ingredients) egg-free. For the school project, we plan to make the real recipe of course, but would like to have an egg-free version for a classmate who is allergic (and for my son, who is nut-allergic).
A chocolate wafer crust would probably be fine for kids.
The thing about the nanaimo bar crust is that it’s not really very sweet. It’s quite rich, but the chocolate flavor should be fairly bitter. It offers a bit of counterpoint to the utterly insane sweetness of the filling, which is primarily corn starch and sugar. Adults, who already tend to find nanaimo bars cloying, would likely find nanaimo bars with a sweeter crust even worse. Kids though, probably won’t care.
I made them last night. I made the mistake of licking the beaters after mixing the filling (not sure what the custard powder does for that, honestly, as it’s such a tiny proportion and you’d think it would need to be cooked first but whatever). Oh, my goodness that was SWEET.
I cut them up this morning so the teacher would just need to pry them up. That was an adventure. I cut through the chocolate and custard layers using a knife, then used a metal spatula - and a lot of body weight on the handle - to cut through the base. My arms were aching.
I dug out one slice, perhaps 2x2 inches. I cut that into 3 pieces. Moon Unit and I ate one each and saved one for Typo Knig and even the sliver I had was too much sugar!
I pity the poor teacher who has to deal with the kids after this!
I wonder if there’s a less tooth-rotting version of the filling?
If you can’t get custard powder, just use corn starch, vanilla flavouring and yellow colouring - that’s all custard powder is. (i.e. it’s not proper custard at all)
I was actually able to get the custard powder - found it buried among the bread machine mixes at Safeway (no clue why it was there rather than, say, with the pudding mix). I’m just wondering what it does to the mixture (aside from the vanilla), as cornstarch has to be cooked before it does anything to most foods.
Hmmmm - it’s not cooked at all in that recipe, so it’s just going to add flavour, colour, very minimal thickening, and perhaps act as an emulsifier/stabiliser.
The whole point of the filling is to be tooth-rotting – the base and top should be fairly bitter to compensate. That said, my mother, who finds nanaimo bars too sweet (but makes them anyway, because she lubs us), has a recipe for a nanaimo bar cheesecake.
It’s kind of in the same vein, but the filling is more cheesecakey and less sweet. If you’d like it, let me know and I’ll ask her to send it to me.
. Fortunately the other ingredients won’t be too hard to find!
