PRETTY LITTLE THINGS

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.

So, Nanaimo bars this time. I was really curious to try them them since I've seen them on the web some months ago. And I really wanted to like them, I really did. So my lacking enthusiasm in the final product was certainly not caused by a lack of motivation. You can guess by now that I was less than happy with them .... It started with Graham Crackers. I've never had some, I've got no idea how they are supposed to taste like, but I expected them to look like crackers, at least. What came out of the oven was not like crackers at all. It resembled sponge - tasty and fragrant, but sponge nevertheless....which hardened up after some time out of the oven, but I don't know if it was anywhere close to the real thing.

Then, the first layer ... Coconut AND almonds? No way! I omitted the coconut and decided to follow the almondy direction throughout the cake.

But it was the second layer that really gave me the creeps! If you take a close look at the recipe picture in the DB-Forum, you can actually see teeth marks in it! No wonder, if you consider that the second "creamy " layer consists basically of sweetened butter, NO buttercream in any way! In my version, I prepared an actual vanilla-almond custard and mixed it with the so-called "buttercream". I added some canned pears on top of the crackers' layer as well before filling the custard cream.

The top chocolate layer was the less problematic.

The results? I brought it to the office yesterday and it was unanimously approved. But personally, for me, it was too too much work for a rather averaged result.