What is a graham cracker? And I can’t even pronounce the second bit! Oh it’s a place as well as a bar! Really? 🙂 It’s the January 2010 Daring Bakers Challenge! Woo!
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.
Posting Date: January 27, 2010
In this month’s challenge, we had the option to go gluten free or to make the crackers using plain flour. I didn’t go gluten free (mainly as locating all the flours would have been difficult and expensive), and so my Graham Crackers are wheat-full!
Now for the baking and making….
Graham Crackers
You need:
2 1/2 cups plus 2 tbsp plain flour
1 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
3 1/2 oz unsalted butter, cut into 1 inch cubes and frozen
1/3 cup honey
5 tbsp whole milk
2 tbsp vanilla extract
For the topping:
3 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
You do:
In a food processor with the blade attachment, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking soda and salt. Pulse to mix. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal.
In a small bowl, whisk together the milk, honey and vanilla. Add to the processor and mix/pulse until the dough just starts to come together. It will be soft and possibly sticky. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and shape into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Cover with cling film and chill for 2 hours or overnight.
This is the dough after chilling overnight in the fridge. Some of the daring bakers found the dough very sticky, but I thought it was ok once the surface was well-floured.
Right so, roll out the dough,cut into crackers and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar topping. Chill again (it’s all about keeping everything cold for these crackers).
Use up the leftover bits of dough using some pastry cutters. Chill those babies too. For about 45 minutes. Then, into the oven for about 10 – 12 mins at 180C. These crackers smell amazing as they cook. Cool on a wire rack.
When cool, start making the nanaimo bars. I’ll post the recipe for the bars as even if you don’t make your own graham crackers, you can make the bars and maybe substitute store-bought grahams or, if not available, digestive biscuits would do the trick. The base is a little like a chocolate biscuit cake (a particular favourite of mine – I really should post that recipe), covered in a layer of vanilla buttercream and then finally a layer of chocolate. I found the middle layer a bit heavy straight from the fridge, but given a bit of time it does soften out a bit. Lots of the Daring Bakers made fabulous variations, including adding in coffee flavouring and completely changing the middle layer to more of a mascarpone/cream cheese-y filling. These bars definitely respond well to variations! For now, here’s the basic recipe…
Nanaimo Bars
Bottom Layer
115g unsalted butter
50g sugar (I used caster sugar)
5 tbsp cocoa powder (I used a mix of Divine Cocoa Powder and Green & Black’s Maya Gold)
1 egg, beaten
160g graham cracker crumbs
55g almonds (I used half almonds, half pecans), finely chopped
130g dessicated coconut (I used half coconut, half oats)
Middle Layer
115g unsalted butter, at room temperature
2tbsp & 2tsp double cream
2tbsp Bird’s Vanilla Custard Powder
127g icing sugar (this is half the amount listed in the recipe, but it’s sweet enough for me!)
Top Layer (I made double the amount below for the top layer, and this gave a thick topping)
115g semi-sweet chocolate (I used 70% dark chocolate)
28g unsalted butter
Right, off we go. Melt the butter, sugar and cocoa powder together in a bowl over a gently simmering saucepan of water. Make sure the water doesn’t touch the bottom of the bowl! When melted, stir in the beaten egg and mix until the mixture begins to thicken. Throw in the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Grab an 8×8 square tin (ungreased) and pop in the chocolatey mix. Press down firmly and evenly. Pop into the fridge until firm (I gave it a couple of hours). I forgot to take a photo of this part (ahem!), so let’s soldier on.
For the middle layer, cream together all the ingredients. It might be easier to start with the butter and cream and slowly add in the icing sugar and custard powder. Beat well until the mixture is light and fluffy. Smooth over the bottom layer and return to the fridge.
Now, melt the chocolate and butter together for the topping. Use the same method as before, using a bowl sitting over a pot of simmering water. As soon as it’s all melted, remove from heat and leave to cool. It’s really important to leave the chocolate mix to cool to room temperature before pouring over the middle layer. Too soon and the layers melt into each other to give a gooey mess. Not good.
Pop it back into the fridge and leave to chill, preferably overnight. Take it out of the fridge about 30 minutes before slicing or else the chocolate topping will crack.
Yum! I really enjoyed this month’s challenge. I really wasn’t sure how the bars were going to taste, but they really are delicious. And very rich. And ridiculously bad for you 🙂 On the bright side, the bars freeze well so could be resurrected at a moment’s notice to impress unexpected visitors. They are also very popular when brought to college and offered to friends. 🙂 And there’s also the (slightly healthier) leftover Graham Crackers…
There are loads of fabulous variations on Nanaimo Bars over at the Daring Kitchen. Check it out!
love all the amazing pictures and it looks delicious.
amazing job on this months challenge.
Thank you! I did enjoy the challenge, even though I left it all ’til the last minute! (And the bars are nearly all gone now too…)
They look great, and you learned some new words too! Nice photos:)
Thank you! And I want a cookie cutter like yours! 😉
Love that photos the cracker shot looks so impressive. Great work on this challenge. Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.
Thank you! Slowly getting used to my new camera, so things are gradually looking a bit better 🙂 Great challenge!
sweet blog! and good go with the bars!!
Yay! Thank you! 🙂
Beautiful job! Great idea on reducing the amount of powdered sugar in the middle. I should have done that…instead I ended up adding almost 1/2 cup of milk to get the butter mixture to absorb all of the powdered sugar and custard powder. Plus, the milk helped to dilute that icky custard flavor (overly starchy). Then I added a tablespoon of vanilla extract to seal the deal. The result was pretty yummy.
Natalie @ Gluten a Go Go
Great idea on the vanilla! Yeah there are a few changes I would make when making these bars again, but it was nice to try the ‘original’ version first! 🙂
Great job on the crackers! LOVE the thick chocolate layer on top of the bars 🙂
The thick choccy layer was so hard to cut from the fridge! But yes, it was tasty! 🙂
Your bars and wafers look amazing! I’m so glad you enjoyed my challenge =D.
Thank you! It was a great choice for this month’s challenge!