Week #7 – Nanaimo Bars

This week I decided to bake something in honor of my recent trip to Canada. In my Week 3 post, I wrote about my first visit to the beautiful village of Mont Tremblant – and my first trip to our neighbors to the north.  I came across an article about a beloved Canadian treat and knew I had to try them.

Nanaimo Bars, named after the city of Nanaimo in British Columbia, are cookie bars that actually don’t require any baking and are a popular dessert across Canada and North America.  I found the recipe using Bing and by searching for an easy, chocolaty recipe.  In class we’ve been talking a lot about Google and search engines, how they return results, their business models, etc.  Google has made everything so easy and all in one place (mail, calendar, news, alerts), that I don’t ever think of going anywhere else to search.  But for the sake of class, I wanted to try another search engine.  Ironically enough, I went to Google and typed in “Bing.” : )

I also tried searching with DuckDuckGo.  I ended up getting some irrelevant results, but I liked the simple design (and the duck was pretty cute).

The recipe I ended up using (with a few minor changes) is from JoyOfBaking.com and features a how-to video and a little background on the yummy bars.

(Video from JoyOfBaking.com)

The bars are three layers: a graham cracker crumb base, a custard butter cream, and chocolate. The site has a lot of great recipes, and instead of just listing the ingredients, the author details each step, which is really helpful for an amateur like me : ).

Well, here they are! A little taste of heaven from good ol’ Canada!