DB's Challenge - Nanaimo Bars

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.

I did not have very much luck with this recipe. Well, the recipe was fine. I just lost my ability to read or something and had to make the recipe twice. One recipe that was waaaay off and strange (although everyone at work ate it up and said it was sinful) and one recipe where I followed the recipe (whoa! what an idea!).

When I followed the recipe the bars turned out perfectly and were delicious.

The mistake bars were good too, but they were really messy to eat.

Let me explain about my mistake. Like I said, I didn't read the recipe. I skimmed the recipe and read something about pudding. So when I was at work, it was 2 days to the post deadline and a huge blizzard blew into town, shutting down all the roads, I panicked!
I needed to make the bars and I couldn't get to the store to buy a package of pudding mix.

What to do?

Go to my Mom and ask her.

How do you make pudding at home?

She whipped up a batch of vanilla pudding for me.

Fast forward to me making the bars.

The recipe called for 2 Tablespoons of dry pudding powder.
I put in 2 cups of pudding!

It wasn't even close to the recipe.

(insert me rolling eyes at myself)

~

Alls well that ends well though.

I made the bars again....2 days past the deadline.

Sorry Daring Baker's!

And the bars are very yummy - rich,but tasty.

I ate one for breakfast.

Part of the challenge was to make our own graham crackers to use in the nanaimo bars crust.

Like I said before - biggest blizzard ever- and I couldn't get to the store to buy the gluten free ingredients.

True, I could have planned better and bought the ingredients ahead of time, but I was distracted with my planning for the Potato Dinner Party.

~

So, I didn't have any whole wheat flour.

I ground up some oatmeal and made oatmeal flour.

Oatmeal flour.



The rest of the ingredients.
I decided to make chocolate graham crackers.

Graham cracker dough mixed up.

Graham crackers rolled out.

It is a very soft and tender dough.

Oh yeah, maybe that's because I used pastry flour and oatmeal flour.

Again - big storm and empty cupboards.

Graham crackers baking.

I cut the crackers after they came out of the oven.

And then I let them sit out to dry.

They broke apart (fell apart) very easily.

Nanaimo bar crust ready to mix up.

Now stop reading: 'Cause I'm about to show you my mistake recipe.

This is all the lovely pudding my Mom made for me with lots of powdered sugar.

Pudding filling poured on top of the crust.

Lots of layers.

Chocolate on top.

And this is what it should look like!