DARING BAKERS CHALLENGE #2

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.

Oh boy... If it weren't for daring bakers I'm not sure I'd be posting at all! Atleast, I'm on time this time round right? :D

So.....Nanaimo.

I've officially gotten a friend's brother to completely fall in love with these bars. They really are quite addictive, I couldn't
stop at one myself. The challenge came at just the right time too, it gave me an opportunity to bring something a little different to my upcoming MAAN reunion. The guine- I mean, my friends seemed to really like them. Not something I'd make often, but it's a good recipe to have on hand for times you have to bring something to a pot luck party.

This months challenge consisted of 2 mandatory parts:
1) Make Graham crackers using the recipe provided.
2) Using the graham crackers, make the Nanaimo bar.

The challenge was hosted by Lauren of who has Celiac Disease. This means that she has a gluten intolerance. Her body can't digest gluten, meaning she can't eat anything with wheat in it.
Which basically rules out most pastas, breads, and commercially made foods...like KitKat.
Can you imagine not being able to eat KITKAT?
Life's tough for her, but that's what her blog's about.
It's about her finding a way to live with Celiac, and still keep eating great tasting food.
Following that vein, she thought she'd try to teach us DB people how to work it Gluten free. It was an option for us to make our graham crackers without gluten.
As much as I would've like to give that a crack, the flours ALONE would have eaten up my baking budget (which is a wee bit tighter than it used to be,now that SPM is over :-/ ) so I opted out for the gluten infested version.

Not that that made the cracker dough any easier to work with.
Bloody sticky difficult little bastard. I had dough under my nails, on my wrist, on my freakin' EYELID ok?
NOT pleasant.
In the end I just rolled it out between sheets of plastic and stuck it in the freezer overnight. That way it hardened up, and I could just plonk it on the baking sheet and be done with it. So elated was I at this seemingly stroke of genius, I forgot to take pictures of the baked crakers.
Nevermind, they weren't exactly the prettiest of things. But they tasted DAMN good. I had plenty of leftovers with the full recipe, so some I made into a cheesecake crust.
The rest I ate.
Smothered in chocolate ganache.
While watching Gordon Ramsey swear.
oh baby yeeeesss.

So, having made my crackers, it was time to move onto making the actual bars.
And of course, these provided their own fair share of drama.

The base is made by melting cocoa, butter and sugar over a double boiler, after which stirring in an egg to thicken it up.
Well, it was late, and I was tired so I thought to myself
"Double Boiler? At this time of night? pshaw... I don't need that. I'll just use the regular stove top."
Where?
Where were my God given brains when I made this decision?
Probably still thinking about Gordon Ramsey swearing.

Alright, so everything was going fine, until I added the egg.
Holy Mother of Cupcakes.
I've never seen anything clump so fast.

Imagine if you will, semi-solid brown objects, floating in a watery brown liquid.
My heart nearly stopped at the sight of this diarrhea reminiscent deluge, and for a full minute,
I whisked like a woman possessed.
Thank the powers that be, that just as my arm was about to give out it all came together in a beautifully smooth paste.
Which just goes to show really.
When life gives you crap, work hard and eventually it'll look good. :-)

So I thought that my troubles were over, and blissfully went about with the rest of the recipe.

Then came the middle layer. I put in one cup of sugar instead of 2 and added a teaspoon of vanilla to the original recipe, since people were saying in the forums that the middle layer was too sweet.
First time I made it, it looked curdled. I mean, REALLY curdled.But it was really late, so I just spread it on the base, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I took it out of the fridge the next day to check, and it looked EVEN WORSE.
So with a sigh, I proceded to scrape off the layer and start again. Same recipe, just using my electric mixer this time round. With caffeine buzzing through my system, I began to beat the buttercream again.
with a vengence.
and it still curdelled.
I swore.
LOUDLY.
And with the fury of a girl under pressure I increased the mixer speed.
And it was fine.
I'd insert another bowel dysfunction metaphor here, but I'm running out of ideas.


Infact, i think I can safely say that this could become one of my favourite buttercream recipe. It comes out soo smooth and buttery, a bit grainy, but we can't help that.
Stupid icing sugar.
At any rate, the rest of the recipe went off without a glitch
(A BIG SHOUTOUT TO MY LOVELY
SULEKHA CAMILLE SIVAPATHAM
FOR ASSISITING ME WITH THE FINAL CHOCOLATE LAYER.)
and it was a hit at the reunion.

Another DB challenge completed.
Delicious.