Nanaimo Bar stolen from Wikipedia

Nanaimo Bars originated in the Nanaimo, British Colombia area in the 1950’s.  A woman named Mabel Jenkins submitted the recipe to a fundraising cookbook and the bars became very popular in the area.  I had never heard of them until I was researching my cupcake alphabet, but they sounded interesting: a bottom crust of chocolate, coconut and nuts, topped with a vanilla custard and covered with a chocolate layer.   My friend Millie is Canadian was nice enough to bring me one (several) back from a visit home.  They were delicious!   In creating my Nanaimo Cupcake, I used the recipe found on the city of Nanaimo’s website.   My original plan was to use the bottom layer of the bar as the bottom of the cupcake, add a cake layer, then fill the cake with custard and top it with melted chocolate.   Of course, I had an issue or two….

Original Ingredients for the bottom layer: 
½ cup unsalted butter (European style cultured)
¼ cup sugar
5 tbsp. cocoa
1 egg beaten
1 ¼ cups graham wafer crumbs
½ c. finely chopped almonds
1 cup coconut

Since I’m currently (and hopefully not indefinitely) on a gluten free diet, I used Kinnikinnick Gluten Free Smoreables Graham Style Crackers.  I tried a couple straight out of the box and was not overly pleased.  They were extremely sweet and had a slightly gummy texture.

The original recipe instructed to melt the butter with the cocoa and sugar in a double boiler then add the eggs and cook until thickened.  I didn’t want to overcook the crust since the bars aren’t baked, so I just combined everything, then plopped it into the cupcake papers.

I am not a gluten free baker and have been unsuccessful making a consistently good gluten filled vanilla cake, so I cheated on the cake layer.

Bobs Red Mill Gluten Free Vanilla Cake Mix

I added 3 eggs, 1/2 cup oil and 1/2 cup water to the mix and stirred then used a scoop to put it into the cupcake pans on top of the chocolate/coconut mixture.  I ended up with 2 pans of cupcakes (24 total) which I baked according to the directions on the bag (325 degrees for around 20 minutes).

While the cupcakes baked, I attempted to make the custard.  The original recipe for the custard:

Second Layer
½ cup unsalted butter
2 Tbsp. and 2 Tsp. cream
2 Tbsp. vanilla custard powder
2 cups icing sugar

Cream butter, cream, custard powder, and icing sugar together well. Beat until light.

I had to make a couple of substitutions.  First, I had no idea where to obtain custard powder.  After googling, I discovered that I could substitute Instant pudding mix.  Second, I forgot to get cream when I was at the grocery store.  All I had in the house was rice milk.  I was hoping that it wouldn’t matter so much since the recipe called for only about 3 tablespoonfuls.   I combined everything together and ended up with an extremely grainy mixture.  I tried adding more rice milk and the mixture started looking curdled.  ARGH.  I wavered back and forth for a few minutes about returning to the grocery store for cream.  I thought about just going out for milk and using the rest of the pudding mix to use instead of the custard layer.  It was already 7:30pm and I only had 2 hours left before bedtime.  I attempted to make instant pudding with rice milk.  I didn’t think it would work and I was right!  The pudding didn’t thicken.  I decided the vanilla custard layer would be represented with the cake layer.   While the cupcakes cooled, I melted some chocolate chips with a little butter.  I topped the cupcakes with the melted chocolate and hoped for the best!

Nanaimo bar Cupcake

Overall, I think people enjoyed them.  I was pretty happy with them.  I thought the vanilla cake layer was good and had a pleasant texture.  Mr Shuck liked them as well.