Nanaimo Bars: Sugar, Butter & Chocolate (A Canadian Tradition)
If you aren’t Canadian, then you might be looking at the title of this post and going, “huh? What’s a Nan..Nanamo…Nanemo…Nanaimo bar?” Well, let us tell you, it’s one of Canada’s favourite desserts.
The bar is named after the city of Nanaimo (pronounced na-nigh-moe) in the province of British Columbia. Why? Presumably because that’s where they originated from. Trying to verify that particular claim borders on the impossible, so we all just sorta choose to accept it up here.
Trevor’s aunt has been bugging him for over a year to do a post on Nanaimo bars, so we decided to finally get to them both because it’s Christmastime here and we need to fulfill our CanCon requirements (or at least that’s what we’re telling ourselves).
So, What Are They?
A sweet layered delicacy that consists mostly of sugar, butter, and chocolate.
Bottom layer = graham crumb base w/ coconut
Middle layer = custard-flavored icing
Top layer = chocolately goodness
The first layer being made.
When Do You Eat Them?
Anytime of the year is a perfect time for Nanaimo bars. Although typically you’ll see them more around Christmas.
Why Nanaimo Bars Are Great
✅ No baking required
✅ Easy to make
✅ Perfect if you have a sweet tooth
✅ CHOCOLATE
The Great Nanaimo Bar Showdown
Premade Nanaimo Bars from Superstore
For seven whole Canadian dollars, you can skip making your own nanaimo bars and go to town on some pre-made ones.
Or you can buy a dozen eggs. You do you.
We can describe these nanaimo bars with one word: sweet. And yes, all nanaimo bars are sweet. But these are one-note. Just pure sugar.
Of course, with most premade junk food, the ingredients aren’t stellar:
Sugars (sugar, Icing Sugar, Glucose, Blackstrap Molasses, Honey), Palm And Vegetable Oil Shortening, Vegetable And Palm Oil And Modified Palm Oil Margarine, Enriched Wheat Flour, Palm Kernel Oil, Water, Milk Ingredients, Cocoa, Liquid Whole Egg, Corn Starch, Coconut (contains Sulphites), Natural Flavour, Whole Wheat Flour, Modified Corn Starch, Salt, Turmeric Extract, Baking Soda, Soy Lecithin, Sorbitan Tristearate, Potassium Sorbate, Ammonium Bicarbonate. May Contain: Peanut, Tree Nuts.
Lots of vegetable and palm oil. No butter. Sadness.
PC Boxed Nanaimo Bar Mix
This was an interesting experiment. We found the boxed mix as we were leaving the baking aisle to go pay for all of the ingredients and we decided that we just haaaaaad to try it.
It’s basically the same as the other two recipes with two main differences:
The dry ingredients came premixed in their own little pouches.
If you use eggs, the instructions call for you to bake it. (Our guess is that they don’t trust us to not over or undercook the eggs in the chocolate fudge layer.)
Outside of that the steps were basically the same. Melt the butter and chocolate. Mix and combine. Spread in the pan. Make the frosting. Spread in the pan. Make the chocolate topping. Spread in the pan. Chill in the fridge.
The end result was…okay. There was not nearly enough chocolate for the top layer, the bottom fudge layer was thiccccccccc, and they wanted you to use parchment paper to…??? Help lift the nanaimo bars out after? We think?
If you need Nanaimo bars in a pinch, maybe skip this product and go for the premade ones.
It just looks visually unappealing as well. (After trimming the edges, it looked ok.)
Nanaimo Bars: The Traditional Recipe
Turns out the City of Nanaimo has an official recipe that they’ve published on their website, so, naturally we had to try it. The only thing we changed was doubling the amount of chocolate for the top layer as we read from this Reddit post that maybe there wasn’t enough chocolate.
The ingredients are easy to find (except for cocoa powder, because there is currently a cocoa crisis). Luckily, Brittany still had some fancy Valrhona cocoa powder in her pantry that we used.
The recipe also oddly calls for unsalted butter (that’s not the weird part), but specifically European style cultured. How has the Canadian dairy lobby not forced the city of Nanaimo to update their recipe to say Canadian butter!? We used Dairyland butter, not because we love the Canadian dairy lobby, but because it was on sale and the Superstore we went to did not carry any European butter.
Lastly, ingredients wise, the recipe just calls for one cup of coconut. No, you don’t need to go out and buy a whole coconut. You need shredded coconut. We think that’s pretty obvious… but just in case it wasn’t. We opted for unsweetened coconut, because there is already a metric-ton of sugar in nanaimo bars, so we really didn’t think it needed anymore.
The process is really straightforward: mix the ingredients for the base and then spread it into an even layer.
Then mix the ingredients for the custard and spread that into an even layer.
Finally, melt the ingredients for the chocolate ganache, (making sure to not scald the chocolate or let it cool down too much) and spread that into an even layer.
🍫 Mediocre Tip: Pour the chocolate on top of the custard and crumble layer and then tilt the pan side to side and back and forth to spread the chocolate. Once it looks even, tap it a few times against your counter to get some of the air bubbles out and help it settle into an even layer. You don’t need to spread it with a spatula!
After you’re done with that, put the whole thing in the fridge for about 20 minutes to firm up. Then take it out, cut it into squares and enjoy.
We highly recommend only having one or two in a sitting. These bad boys are absolutely filled with sugar and butter, you will feel sick if you eat too many of them in one sitting. (Challenge accepted?)
Nanaimo Bars, But With Dark Chocolate
Nanaimo bars are sweet… but can we make them less sweet? Was the thought process behind this experiment. We used the same recipe as above, but for the chocolate layer opted for Baker’s 70% dark chocolate instead of semi-sweet chocolate.
Semisweet chocolate, left. Dark chocolate, right.
Overall, Brittany likes the dark chocolate version, but Trevor thinks there’s something weird about the Baker’s dark chocolate that his tongue does not like. (He would like to stress that it’s not a fault of the recipe, only a fault of his tastebuds.)
We both agree though that the dark chocolate does throw the balance off a bit, as it is more rich and can overshadow the coconut layer a bit.
Nanaimo Bar FAQs
Are nanaimo bars Canadian?
Yes. (Someone didn’t read the intro of the blog post…)
How thick should my layers be?
Go with your heart. If you want to double the chocolate layer, do it. There is no right or wrong answer. (Actually, there is a wrong answer and it’s the ratio shown on this stamp — Trevor and Brittany both agree on this.)
Which layer is the best layer?
This is controversial. Trevor loves the custard filling. Brittany loves the chocolate coconut layer and chocolate topping.
We remain divided on this.
Brittany agrees!!
What kind of custard powder should I use?
We used Bird’s custard powder. Now we have a shit ton of custard powder and don’t know what we should do with it, besides make more nanaimo bars. Please let us know what else we can make with this, otherwise it’s just going to sit in Brittany’s pantry, forgotten. (Besides custard.)
Can I make nanaimo bars in a round pan?
No, nanaimo bars belong in a square pan. They must be rectangular.
Can you freeze nanaimo bars?
Yes, next question.
Should I keep nanaimo bars in the fridge?
Yes, chocolate melts. Keep it in the fridge. It’ll also give the chocolate topping a bit of a bite to it.
Can I make nanaimo bars without coconut?
NO.
Shredded Coconut: A Mediocre Rant
No good blog post is complete without a rant or a side tangent on something related to, but not the main point of the post. This time it’s about No Name shaved coconut.
Let us turn back the clock to when we were buying ingredients. Obviously we need to acquire shredded coconut. Don’t worry, No Name has us. A bag of unsweetened shredded coconut. Awesome. Wait, did we need sweetened or unsweetened? Let’s check the recipe. Oh, it doesn't say. Uh. Let’s get one of each and maybe we can compare and contrast. Excellent, let’s grab both of them and go.
This sounds so simple. So innocent. Yet, there is a web of lies and deceit lurking beneath the surface.
For those of you unfamiliar with No Name, it’s a generic brand of goods here in Canada that is the “house brand” of Loblaws. Their branding is super slick with all yellow packaging and black text. It’s simple and gets the point across. TYPICALLY if there are variations on an item, they will use a splash of a bold colour to denote a variation: blue, green, red, etc.
So we grab a bag of unsweetened medium coconut (green). There is a bag that has blue on it, right next to the unsweetened medium coconut, so we grab that one, as everything we know is telling us that blue = not green = different = must be sweetened.
Nope.
Also unsweetened. But fine instead of medium.
This made us so incredibly, irrationally angry. Yes this is a first world problem. Yes we are still mad about it.
WHHYYYYYYYYY??? Galen, you should feel bad about this design. Horrible UX. Horrible. THE COLOUR DRAWS YOUR EYE TO THE THING THAT’S DIFFERENT, GALEN. WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO HIGHLIGHT THAT IT’S COCONUT AND NOT SWEETENED OR UNSWEETENED, GALEN??? (pls don’t fire your lead designer, instead consider firing the CEO)
Your packaging design is bad and you should feel bad.
/rant
Do you love nanaimo bars? Hate them? Never had them before? Let us know in the comments below!