Nanaimo Bars? That's What I Said.

The Daring Kitchen had us make Nanaimo bars last month. They're Canadian, enough said? Joke. Laugh here. I honestly thought to myself, "Really? I have to make the graham crackers first?" Really. I did. The challenge was to make them gluten free if we could, but I couldn't find any of the flours needed to make it that way - so I used 2 1/2 cups of wheat flour to substitute all the other stuff. I thought they turned out rather well.

After making the graham crackers, we were instructed to make Nanaimo bars. Check out the original recipe here. By now, you've probably started to realize that I almost never follow the exact recipe (this drives my husband nuts). The recipe involved coconut and almonds. I really don't like coconut and didn't have any almonds. So I put in 2 Tbls of peanut butter instead. Mmm.  I only had about half of the powdered sugar that I needed too, so I only used half of the middle layer recipe. I would actually recommend doing it that way. More filling would make them way too rich.

The bars were fabulous - the cheese makers at work went crazy over them. Helpful hint: refrigerate or freeze the bars between each layer. It's very difficult to spread on the next layer if at room temperature. Trust me.