Gluten-free Nanaimo Bars (or What are these strange Canadian treats of which you speak?)

So this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge was brought to us by Lauren over at Celiac Teen who threw down the gauntlet for folks to not only embrace the gluten-free, but also to embrace the uniquely Canadian treat known as Nanaimo bars (from scratch of course!).  If you haven’t done so already, go check out Lauren’s blog.  She likes to cook — she likes to cook gluten-free, she’s a fellow Vancouver Islander! AND she’s taken it on herself to create an ebook of recipes to help raise money for Haiti relief!  So many kinds of awesome rolled up in one!

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.

So I’m up against the clock again, working down to the wire to get this up and posted, so better pics will come, but the gist of the challenge was to make Nanaimo bars from scratch, in particular, making the graham crackers for the crust from scratch.  I opted to stick with the gluten-free option for these, because I figured they would also make a tasty base for cheesecake, so why not give it a try.

After scrounging around a fair bit, I gave one recipe which contained xantham gum a try (against my better judgement!).  Graham crackers are fairly crumby, in fact, just barely held together with that smooth yet sandy texture, and LOTS of honey flavour.  I wasn’t happy with the first batch I made, which didn’t have the crumb I was after.  Although they would have made satisfactory crumbs for the base, I went at it a second time, using the same basic recipe as Lauren used, except I substituted fine brown rice flour for the sweet rice flour, and light buckwheat flour for the sorghum.  I use brown rice flour in my gluten-free pastry, and really like the texture, and have really been liking the flavour of the light buckwheat flour.

Anyhow, a couple of notes:

• make sure you don’t roll these any thinner than 1/4″ thick, or they won’t have the right crisp yet firm texture you need for s’mores, and second,
• use your silpat mat to roll these out (trust me, you will thank me!)

So here’s the preliminary bad nighttime kitchen lighting photo.  I made these unadulterated because I like my Nanaimo bars straight-up.  No fancy flavours for me thank you!  Because these are pretty sweet all-round, I used unsweetened coconut in the base, and kept the almonds fairly large for added texture.  You also cannot monkey around with the middle layer — you MUST use Bird’s Custard powder, and the resulting mix is not much more than a thick icing.  The final slather on top of a tasty bittersweet chocolate sets the whole works off!  One recipe makes an 8-inch square pan, or 16 individual portions.

Another addition to go down in the pantheon of uniquely Canadian food stuffs such as Poutine, Tourtiere, Buttertarts and Coffee Crisps! (NOW don’t you wish you lived here?).  There’s a whole raft of these to look at, so in addition to checking out Lauren’s blog, head over to the Daring Kitchen to see all the variations other Daring Bakers have come up with!

Gluten-Free Graham Wafers

120 grams finely ground brown rice flour
100 grams Tapioca Starch
60 grams Ligh Buckwheat Flour
1 cup Dark Brown Sugar, Lightly packed
1 teaspoon Baking soda
3/4 teaspoon  Kosher Salt
7 tablespoons (100 g) Unsalted Butter (Cut into 1-inch cubes and frozen)
1/3 cup  Honey
5 tablespoons Milk
2 tablespoons Vanilla Extract

use a food processor for best results.  Roll to 1/4 inch thick and Bake at 350 degrees for 25 -30 minutes.

Nanaimo Bars
Ingredients:

For Nanaimo Bars — Bottom Layer
1/2 cup (115 g) (4 ounces) Unsalted Butter
1/4 cup (50 g) (1.8 ounces) Granulated Sugar
5 tablespoons (75 mL) Unsweetened Cocoa
1 Large Egg, Beaten
1 1/4 cups (300 mL) (160 g) (5.6 ounces) Gluten Free Graham Wafer Crumbs (See previous recipe)
1/2 cup (55 g) (1.9 ounces) Almonds (Any type, Finely chopped)
1 cup (130 g) (4.5 ounces) Coconut (Shredded, sweetened or unsweetened)

For Nanaimo Bars — Middle Layer
1/2 cup (115 g) (4 ounces) Unsalted Butter
2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons (40 mL) Heavy Cream
2 tablespoons (30 mL) Vanilla Custard Powder (Such as Bird’s. Vanilla pudding mix may be substituted.)
2 cups (254 g) (8.9 ounces) Icing Sugar

For Nanaimo Bars — Top Layer
4 ounces (115 g) Semi-sweet chocolate
2 tablespoons (28 g) (1 ounce) Unsalted Butter

Directions:
1. For bottom Layer: Melt unsalted butter, sugar and cocoa in top of a double boiler. Add egg and stir to cook and thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in crumbs, nuts and coconut. Press firmly into an ungreased 8 by 8 inch pan.
2. For Middle Layer: Cream butter, cream, custard powder, and icing sugar together well. Beat until light in colour. Spread over bottom layer.
3. For Top Layer: Melt chocolate and unsalted butter over low heat. Cool. Once cool, pour over middle layer and chill.