Nanaimo Bars - Updated!

 Updated!  Thanks, Becky for letting me know that I forgot to post the actual recipe amounts!  You'll now find it at the bottom of the post.

I love Christmas time.  It is, hands down, my favourite season.  I love the lights, the parties, the colours, the snowiness, but best of all I love the food!

There is absolutely nothing that tastes like Christmas more for me than Nanaimo Bars. Except maybe mandarin oranges.
 

My mom used to make Nanaimo Bars every year for Christmas, and only for Christmas. I'm pretty sure she hated making them, but knew we loved them and loved us enough to suffer through. One Christmas after I got married, I decided to learn how to make them. On our honeymoon to Nanaimo, the Vancouver Island city that the bars are named for, we received a couple of Nanaimo Bars in our bed and breakfast room each day.  I looked around online and found that the city has an official recipe. I took that recipe and, after a few tries and minor adaptations, found the perfect recipe for here in Calgary. My mom doesn't make Nanaimos anymore - that's my job. 

I've discovered that the process I use for making these delicious bits of chocolate heaven is just as important as the right amounts of ingredients. So I've taken lots of photos and will describe all the tips I have as we go along.

Nanaimo Bars are made in 3 layers:  a no-bake-cookie-like bottom layer, a middle layer of custardy buttercream, and a top layer of decadent semi-sweet chocolate.  Let's start with the base.

Gather your ingredients. You'll notice that mine are almost all No-Name.  It might taste better with brand name, but I've always been happy with the results I get with these.  You'll be stirring almost constantly, so it helps to have everything set out and measured ahead of time.  

Then, before you start cooking anything, prepare your pan.  You'll want a 8x8 square pan.  You'll need to line it in parchment.  This will allow you to lift the whole thing out of the pan in order to cut them - crucial if you want nice straight cuts.  In order to make the parchment fit, I push my piece of paper into the pan with both hands, then scratch inside each corner with my fingernails.  This leaves a mark that helps in the next step.

Pull the paper out of the pan and cut out the corners, using the scratch marks as the stop.  See the picture for a better idea - I can't describe this very well. Then put the paper back in the pan.  It should sit pretty nicely now.

Set up your double boiler.  If you don't have one (I don't), then make your own! All you'll need is a large glass bowl, and a medium pot.  Make sure that the bowl rests on the edges of the pot, and does NOT sit in the water you'll be putting in the pot. Put about half and inch of water in the bottom of the pot, and heat it up to simmering.  You want the water to be low enough that it's not touching the bottom of the bowl.

 
Put the butter, sugar, and cocoa in the bowl. I don't always put them in all at once.  It is a little easier to mix if you let the butter get mostly melted before you add the sugar and cocoa.

A note here on the butter.  I didn't have any unsalted butter today, and for the first time I just made them with the salted butter I had on hand.  Don't. They are too salty, and there's no salt in the recipe to reduce.  So you really need the unsalted butter.  Now I know.

Heat and stir the butter, sugar, and cocoa until everything is melted and mixed well.  Then add the egg and keep stirring.  At first it will look like this:

 
Keep heating and stirring, and the oil will start to separate and look like this:

Keep stirring, you're almost there. When it's ready, it will look like this, very smooth and cohesive:

As soon as you get to this stage, take it off the heat, dump in the graham crumbs and the coconut, and stir until it's all mixed well. Press it into the prepared pan, making it as smooth as you can.

Whew, you're done the hardest part.  And really, it wasn't too bad, was it?  Now, let the base cool in the fridge until it's not warm to the touch anymore.  In the meantime, prepare your middle layer.

In a mixer bowl, cream the butter and custard powder together.  Then add the cream and mix for a bit.  I rarely buy cream just for Nanaimo Bars, since it takes to little. Whenever I have leftover cream from another project (last time it was pumpkin pie), I freeze it in ice cube trays in the right amounts, so I always have it handy. I have also used whole milk, though my husband says it's not quite as good.

Add the icing sugar.  I hate it when I get icing sugar all over my kitchen, so I add it half a cup at a time, and cover the mixer with a dish towel.  Mix it all up until it has the consistency of stiff buttercream icing.  You may need to add more than the 2 cups listed, depending on your temperature and humidity. You want it to be good and stiff.

Spread the buttercream over the base.  It's going to be all lumpy, like this:

 Here's the trick to getting it smooth. Cover it with a piece of waxed paper and smooth it with your fingers.  Put it back in the fridge for an hour or more.  You want the buttercream to harden enough that the wax paper will come off easily.  It works, I promise.  I didn't leave mine in the fridge long enough, but it still worked.

And now for the easiest layer - the chocolate.

You'll use the double boiler again for this, unless you're good at melting chocolate in the microwave.  I'm not.  It never works out for me, so I stick to the double boiler.

It is crucial that you don't get any water in with the chocolate, so if you use the same bowl as you did for the base layer, wash it and dry it well.

Melt the chocolate and butter slowly in the bowl until it is smooth or almost smooth.  If there are a few little lumps of chocolate left in the bowl when you take it off the pot, the residual heat in the melted chocolate will take care of them.

Now.  Let the chocolate sit in the bowl for about 5 or 10 minutes. You want it to cool a little, but still be very liquid.  Pour the chocolate onto the buttercream layer.  

And here's where I wish I had a video setup to show you what I do next.  I shake the pan.  Keep it flat on the counter at first, and shake it back and forth and side to side to spread the chocolate.  You will need to pick it up and tilt it slightly to get it into the corners.  If you didn't overcook the chocolate, or let it cool too much, this shaking is all you will need to get a really smooth finish on the top.  Don't use a spatula, unless it's really not working. They will taste just as good if they don't look great, but you'll get lots of compliments if the top is smooth.

And here's the next big tip I have.  DON'T put them in the fridge yet.  Let them cool on the counter.  In an hour or so, they'll be ready to cut.  If you cool the chocolate hard in the fridge, it will just crack when you try to cut them.  If you have to put them in the fridge right away (soccer practice, toddler backed up the toilet with his toy hammer...) then make sure to let the chocolate come to room temperature later when you get them out to cut them. 

Lift them out with the parchment paper, then peel the paper down off the sides.  Using a long, sharp, dry knife, cut them into bars of whatever size you want.  My favourite is 1-inch squares.  They are bite sized, great for parties, and a treat that small couldn't possibly have any calories, could it?  

Nanaimo Bars
Adapted from Official City of Nanaimo Recipe

Bottom Layer:
½ Cup Unsalted Butter
¼ Cup White Sugar
5 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
1 Egg
1 Cup Graham Crumbs
1 Cup Shredded, Unsweetened Coconut

Middle (Custard) Layer:
½ Cup Unsalted Butter
2 Tbsp + 2 tsp Cream
2 Tbsp Vanilla Custard Powder
2+ Cups Icing Sugar

Top Layer:
6 Squares Baker’s Semisweet Chocolate
2 Tbsp Butter








 

4 Ingredient Fix for Too-Fishy Fish

Nobody follows this blog for the recipes.  In fact, I'm pretty sure all my followers like me, not really my sad little attempt at blogging, but I'm getting better, right?

This recipe is actually one I found on Our Best Bites (a blog that you really should follow for the recipes - they're amazing!), but it's designed to go on pork chops, not fish.

I occasionally experiment by buying a kind of fish that we haven't had before, and sometimes I do well (Steelhead Trout = yum!) and sometimes I do really badly (Tipalia = yuck!), and sometimes it turns out somewhere in the middle.  Basa is somewhere in the middle.  I didn't think it was too bad, but Arvid thought it was too fishy.  So on went this sauce.  It's bold, super flavourful, and really easy.  You don't want to put this on a fish you like the taste of (read: Salmon), as it will completely hide it's flavour.  But it's great when you just need to use up that jumbo bag of basa fillets that you got for $2.99 that hubby doesn't love.

Ingredients:

Fishy fish of your choosing. About 4 servings worth.

Sauce:
1 1/2 TBSP Dijon or whole-grained Mustard
1 1/2 TBSP Honey
1 clove Garlic, minced or pressed
Splash Liquid Smoke











Yes, the glob in the bowl is honey.  I don't buy honey in cute little photogenic bear-shaped bottles.  In fact I don't buy honey at all.  I ask for it for Christmas and it usually arrives in large food storage buckets.  I love honey in big buckets.  It makes me feel safe.  Like huge packs of toilet paper.  But I think that's another post...


Method:

1 - Mix all the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl.

 2 - Place fish in a greased oven safe pan or dish. And season with salt and pepper.  I forgot to do this.  Don't forget.

3 - Spread sauce on fish.


4 - Broil for about 10 minutes per inch of fillet thickness, or until fish flesh is opaque and flakes with a fork.

  5 - Eat.

We had ours with beets.  And bread.  But the bread wasn't entertaining.  The pink teeth were.

Panora Close Park

We chose this park today because it's closer to cousin Catie's house, and since her mommy just had a new baby, we wanted to make it easy on her. It's a really nice park, nicer than anything we find in our neighborhood. Clean grounds, no peeling paint. No shade though, and only a couple of benches. My favorite thing about this park is this smallish structure, just right for my kids.  Henrik only fell off once!

As I sit here, watching Henrik:
There are two little girls, older than Bryn, who obviously live close. They've just invited Bryn to play Frisbee with them. I can't hear what they're saying, but they're clapping, and smiling and holding Bryn's hand. I was about to pack the kids up to go home, but this is just too cute! We'll go home in a little while.

Huntmeadow Playground

Last week we found a new park just by wandering around our neighborhood (by car). It's small, which is great. I don't have to worry so much about Henrik falling off big stuff. It was a little dirty - litter and branches from the most recent hail storm. But it's remote, with no busy streets around it, and it has shade to sit in. Because it's so close to home, I think this is my new favorite.

Bryn has recently discovered see-saws.  She loves them!

4 days in the 'Wack

In Chilliwack I wanted to do stuff that we just can't do in Calgary.  I really wanted to make some memories with Bryn that she would love and would never forget.  To a certain degree, I think we succeeded. We spent one day at the waterpark, and another at the beach, both things that we don't have here in Calgary.  Bryn hated the slides, refusing to go on any but the baby ones.  And she hated the beach, refusing to go near the water. Sigh.  My nervous little girl!  I do hope that she grows out of it someday, at least most of it.

Bryn and I did make a sand castle. A very sad little sand castle.  What can I say?  I'm very much a city girl!  She had fun doing that.  And she liked our picnic lunch.  She always likes lunch.

 Henrik, however, LOVED the beach. He liked the water, walked all over the sand barefoot, and picked up everything.  He and Arvid had a great time.

I am not a fly.

We went on our annual family vacation to British Columbia this year.  My parents have a cabin at the Shuswap Lake, and are very generous in sharing it with all us kids!  Arvid's parents live in the Fraser Valley, and we try to visit them there each summer, too.  This year, we combined the two trips, spending 4 days at the cabin, then driving on for 4 days with Arvid's family.

I had every intention of doing several vacation posts, or at least writing down a few things each day to share, but it was a really low-key vacation, so I didn't make many notes.  The most eventful day was the first day.  The kids were great for the 8 or so hours in the car, with only a few fights.  Henrik growls.  Bryn doesn't like Henrik to growl.  So she screams at him to stop, then continues to cry and scream when he doesn't stop.  It was a lovely half hour, but in all the trip was surprisingly calm.

Then we arrived at the cabin.  The first thing Henrik did was fall halfway down the main stairs.  They're carpeted, with good padding underneath, so he wasn't really harmed.  A few minutes after he calmed down from that fright,  he ran head-long into the edge of a door.  A very solid door.  This is the result. The good thing is that he got most of his injuries out of the way on that first day, and did pretty well until the last full day there, when he managed to topple the high-chair over backwards!  What am I going to do when this boy starts really climbing on things!



Bryn loved the lake.  Well, not the lake so much.  The weather wasn't super hot, so we didn't spend much time in the water.  But she loved the toys and playing outside on the deckm especially with Grandpops.  On that first day, Grandpops  found a tiny frog outside and asked Bryn if she wanted to see it.  Bryn's response: "Yeah! The frog won't lick me because I am not a fly!"  Yeah, she has some pretty serious critter phobias, but at least she looked at the frog with Grandpops!

Summer Adventure - Allen Bill Pond

Inspired by Jenny, I've been trying to get out and do more adventure stuff as a family. When the kids woke up from their Sunday afternoon naps, we packed everyone up, along with a picnic supper and Bryn's bike, and headed out to the mountains.

We went back to Allen Bill Pond, in K-Country, which we had been to last summer with the Noblets and the Franklins from our ward. We had supper as soon as we arrived, thanks to grumpy boy Henrik.

 We played in the river awhile, Bryn rode her bike around the pond, then we packed up the car again.

Arvid asked if we had time to take the scenic route home.  I asked which route is the scenic one.  He said 'Turn left instead of right, then find our way home from there."  Sounded good to me.  We ended up on a very long, very bumpy, very dusty gravel logging road, which was a blast for the first 20 minutes or so.  The kids laughed as we jostled and Bryn kept asking if there was going to be more bumps!  But after about an hour, it got pretty tiresome.  And it was way past Henrik's bedtime, so he cried.  A lot.  But we made it home (thanks to an ox-in-the-mire stop at the PetroCanada west of Calgary), and have a fun adventure story to tell.  Isn't that what it's all about?  

Robots

One of the few good moments of Monday. It was a tough day. Broken glass. Cuts and lots of blood. Hail. Soaking Mommy trying to save the plants. Poopy nickers. Butterfly decals peeled from the walls. DVDs taken from their boxes. Boys who won't sleep. A tough day. But we danced like robots. We survived after all.

Car Seat Tray Revamp

I got this carseat tray at a consignment shop in Airdrie, Grow With Us.  I had been planning on making something like it for Bryn for our Lake trip this year, since I had no idea where to find one.  I'm so glad I found it, 'cause it saved me a lot of time and effort.

I did want it to have a magnetic top so that Bryn could play with her Melissa and Doug dress-up doll clothes.  So I bought some sheet metal (try the stuff in the ducting isle at Home Depot - it's much thinner).  I took out the liner that the tray came with traced it on the metal, and cut it out with tin snips.  I covered the edge with electrical tape, which was much easier than I thought it would be.

I wanted to give her a second game to play on the tray, so I printed some shapes on a printable magnet sheet that I had laying around, and coloured them in with crayons (I never use my colour printer, so the ink has all gone dry).  I cut them out (in front of NCIS reruns), drew corresponding shapes on the metal, and she'll have a fun little matching game that should keep her busy for a chunk of the trip.  Now, if only I could figure out how to keep Henrik busy for 6 hours!

By the way, Grow With Us is probably the best second-hand kids store I've been to in the Calgary area. Not that I've been to all that many, but this one was really great.  Room for the stroller, well organized clothes and toys, and I found everything I went for (and a few more things).

Ugly Yellow Cake

This cake was NOT pretty.

It was tasty, which is far more important than pretty in my opinion.  After all, this is food we're talking about, and dessert, even.  This is why I don't generally use shortening in my icings. Butter tastes way better! 

This cake was supposed to be pretty and tasty, but it just wasn't.

I think I was going for a white chocolate ganache.  Which is kind of a yellowy colour, since white chocolate isn't actually white.  And I didn't wait for the ganache to cool enough before I poured it over the buttercream base.  So it slouched.  Then, I tried to 'fix' it by adding drizzled semi-sweet chocolate on top.  But I think I let it cool too much, so I ended up with a globby mess. 

Not pretty.  Not pretty at all.  But, definitely tasty!

Polka Dot Cake

I saw this cake on one of my favourite cake blogs, i am baker, and knew I HAD to try it sometime.  That sometime finally came in January of this year, for the family birthday party.  It was a hit, and I'd love to do it again and again, 'cause it's pretty neat looking.  But I end up with so much left over icing, because of all of the colours required. And I'd need to buy a few more grass tips.

Harvest Glen Park

We've decided to embark on a search for the perfect playground.  After Henrik's morning nap, we get in the car, and wander the neighbourhoods looking for a new go-to place to play.

Here's what we thought of the one we found today.


 It's a little too open to the street, but that street is not super busy. There are four swings, two of each kind, which is great if there is more than just my two little ones.





There is some shade, but it felt too far away from the play structures for me to install myself there on a blanket, so we sat in the sun.





My favourite feature was this great little mini structure that both kids liked a lot. It was the perfect size for Henrik.
 


But in the end, Bryn said that she didn't like it, and that she wanted to try a different park next time.  So the search continues!