Chocolate Creamsicle Nanaimo Bars

We do our best to eat as locally as we can, but a long winter of apples, mushrooms, and potatoes can break down even the most devoted locavore, and I’m no exception. When J. asked for oranges, I didn’t put up much of a fight. I bought them. 

But unfortunately they weren’t very good. Josh tells me that it’s from drought, and I don’t know enough about oranges to dispute him. All I know is that the bag I got was kind of a dud. They looked pretty, but the taste and the texture were lacking. I felt bad for J. and went out and bought him more, but there was still that big mesh bag of oranges in our fridge and something needed to be done with the damn things.

Enter nanaimo bars. I’ve been on a bit of a nanaimo bar kick lately. It’s not just hometown pride - it’s that the things are so freakin’ versatile. If it goes good with chocolate, you can make it into a nanaimo bar and count on it being spectacular. So despite already having a fridge full of praline nanaimo bars, I set out to make myself some more, this time using up J.’s drought-oranges.

I started with this recipe for chocolate covered candied orange peel from Leite’s Culinaria, the only change being not dipping the finished product in chocolate. My theory is that the chocolate in the nanaimo bars is enough and adding more might end up being overkill (while maybe you can’t overdo it on chocolate, you can overdo it on that thick chocolate texture, IMO. If you’ve got a bar with a soft creamy centre, a granular nutty base, and a solid, buttery chocolate top, you should probably end the texture blast with the candied orange peel and forgo adding anything more - too much complexity can be bad). I digress.

The candied orange peel is an optional addition to the following recipe. It adds pretty and it’s a great use of spare oranges, but it’s not entirely necessary. Orange extract and rich, dark Callebaut chocolate are the real stars here. The rest of the ingredients are just holding them together taste-wise, which is exactly what any good nanaimo bar recipe should do.

Chocolate Creamsicle Nanaimo Bar

(very, very much adapted from the nanaimo bar recipe provided by the City of Nanaimo)

Bottom Layer

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1/4 cup sugar

5 tbsp. cocoa

1 egg, beaten

1 cup graham wafer crumbs

1/4 cup finely chopped almonds

1 cup coconut

1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts

1 tsp. finely chopped fresh rosemary

Melt the first three ingredients in top of a double boiler. Add the egg and stir to cook and thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in crumbs, coconut, nuts, and rosemary. Press firmly into an ungreased 8”X8” pan.

Second Layer

1/2 cup unsalted butter

2 tbsp. plus 2 tsp. cream

2 tbsp. vanilla custard powder (I use Bird’s, but use what you have available, including vanilla pudding mix)

2 cups icing sugar

1 tsp. orange extract

1/2 tsp flake salt (like the Canadian Sea Salt from the Vancouver Island Salt Company)

Cream butter, cream, custard powder, and icing sugar together. Beat until light and fluffy. Spread over the bottom layer.

Third layer

4 oz. dark chocolate

2 tbsp. unsalted butter

1/2 tsp. orange extract

Melt chocolate and butter over low heat. Add orange extract. Once the chocolate mixture has cooled but is still liquid, pour over the second layer and chill in the refrigerator.

And if you’ve gone overboard and made the candied orange peel, place it prettily on top. Aw, shucks - that’s gorgeous!

Happy Medium Cornbread

I grew up with that fluffy, sweet northern cornbread. It was baked in a cake pan and presented in squares which we’d always slice in half and slather with butter. I loved it. I didn’t even know that there was any other kind of cornbread until I met my husband, who was born in Louisiana. The first time he made that thinner, denser southern style cornbread, I thought maybe he’d royally screwed up the recipe.

The two styles of cornbread are so incredibly different that they really ought not to be lumped together under the same name. Northern cornbread is sweet and cake-like. It’s generally made in a pan or muffin tin, it’s got baking soda and baking powder, and it has more flour than southern cornbread, which sometimes has none at all. Southern cornbread, on the other hand, is typically unsweetened. It’s flatter and denser and more savoury, and it’s made in a heavily greased hot cast-iron skillet. The two are on opposite ends of the cornbread spectrum.

So of course I had to try to have them meet in the middle. It made sense, really. My mealtime plans are already generally complex and fraught with uncertainties, right? I don’t need to add to it the decision of which cornbread to make. There had to be a way to combine them. The best of both worlds and all that.

As it turns out, there is a happy medium that can be obtained in the cornbread world.

I tried to take the best from both versions (and for this I searched through all the cornbread recipes I have tried and enjoyed - there are many - and picked ingredients from each one). That meant a little bit of sugar, some flour, and some rising agents from the northern side, and buttermilk, lots of cornmeal, and a lard-greased cast iron skillet from the southern side. I think it turned out pretty well. It's a simple recipe and it's the best I’ve ever had. One less decision I’ll need to make on chili night. 

Happy Medium Cornbread

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups cornmeal

1/2 cup flour

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

3 tbsp sugar

2 cups buttermilk

1 egg

6 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

2-3 tbsp lard, bacon drippings, or - if you must - vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 400F. Use lard to liberally grease a 10” cast iron skillet. Put the skillet into the oven to heat.

Mix together the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine the wet ingredients. Pour the wet mix into the dry mix and stir until just combined.

Remove the hot skillet from the oven and pour the batter into it. Bake it for about 20 minutes, until the top is golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. 

And that’s it.