Nanaimo Bar

A cocoa-colored cracker base is layered with a pale yellow cream and a thin layer of chocolate. Named after Nanaimo on Canada’s west coast, the Nanaimo bar is a chilled confection cut into bars, made by preparing three layers separately and stacking them. It uses ready-made crackers and is not baked in the oven. A small sweet served at home and at church gatherings passed through local cookbooks, sales in shops, and a town contest before becoming a symbol of the place.

Sliced Nanaimo bars, showing the dark base, pale cream, and chocolate layers. Photo: Alex Lozupone, 2011-06-29, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Downscaled version from the source host. Any processing at the time of original publication is unknown; no additional processing for this use.

Cream and chocolate layered on a cracker base

The city’s recipe (the ingredient proportions and method) melts butter, sugar, and cocoa over a water bath, then mixes in beaten egg and heats the mixture until it thickens. Off the heat, crushed graham crackers, coconut, and finely chopped almonds are mixed in, and the mixture is pressed firmly into the bottom of the pan. Rather than baking flour into a base, it binds crumbs of already-baked crackers with fat and egg.

The middle layer is a lightly whipped buttercream that combines butter, cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla-flavored custard powder. Unlike a custard cooked from eggs and milk, it is a cream given its aroma and pale color by custard powder. For the top, chocolate is melted with a small amount of butter, cooled to a temperature at which it stays liquid, poured on in a thin layer, and refrigerated. Keeping the heat of the chocolate from melting the cream below makes it possible to create three layers: a base containing crumbs, a soft cream, and a thin, set layer of chocolate.

A 1952 cookbook gave it other names

After the war, when sugar and butter became available again, sweets made with crackers and similar ingredients and set by chilling became widespread. Dainties, small sweets served to guests at home, were also made with these ingredients. According to research by food culture scholar Lenore Lauri Newman, the 1952 cookbook of the Nanaimo Hospital Women’s Auxiliary contained three recipes close to today’s three-layer sweet, and they were called chocolate squares or chocolate slices.

A 1953 newspaper described a “London Fog Bar,” also known as the Nanaimo bar, and the Nanaimo name also appears in a cookbook from the same year. Newspapers from 1947–48 carried a no-bake chocolate sweet similar to today’s base. Newman speculates that the custard-flavored cream and the chocolate on top may have been added later.

A 1954 women’s group cookbook from New Brunswick also includes a similar three-layer sweet as “Mabel’s Squares.” Similar three-layer sweets were called by names bearing place names or people’s names. Household proportions and names traveled through submissions to newspapers and through local cookbooks.

Ready-made products, but hospitality still took effort

Postwar Nanaimo was a town built on the paper industry, home to working-class families of middle-class means. Dainties served at home and at church meals also served to show one’s skill at hospitality and a way of life that allowed time for such effort. Butter and sugar were used generously, crackers, custard powder, and chocolate were bought, and the three layers were made with care. Even without an oven, this sweet required the expense of gathering the ingredients and the effort of making the layers one at a time.

Newman links these expectations of hospitality to a society in which women were kept away from paid work. Ready-made and brand-name products also became signs of trust in the new food industry and of prosperity. Unlike sweets that bring together local farm produce, a sweet that combined store-bought ingredients at home eventually became the town’s specialty.

Shop sales and the city’s 1986 recipe contest

Susan Mendelson says she began selling them in 1979 at The Lazy Gourmet, which she co-owned in Vancouver, and included her shop’s recipe in her 1980 book. She turned a sweet already loved in homes into a shop product. The home sweet also went on to become a staple of city shops and caterers.

In 1986, the mayor and a local commercial facility held a contest for a signature recipe, collecting about 100 recipes over four weeks, and Joyce Hardcastle’s was selected. The recipe the city presents today is this winning entry. Several versions also appeared in the cookbook for Vancouver’s Expo 86 that same year, and it became known as a sweet bearing the name of its place.

Tasting tours and new flavors

On the Nanaimo Bar Trail, which takes visitors around shops in the city, you can taste not only the traditional three-layer version but also versions made with peanut butter or salted caramel. There are also cheesecakes and ice creams that draw on the flavors of the Nanaimo bar, carrying it into other desserts. In 2019, it was also chosen for “Sweet Canada,” a set of stamps featuring regional sweets, and through the sweet’s name, the town of Nanaimo has become widely known.

Three varieties bought on Commercial Street in Nanaimo, differing in how the chocolate is applied and in shape. Photo: Simon Villeneuve, 2012-08-09, location unknown (the sweets were bought in Nanaimo, Canada). Original image / CC BY-SA 3.0. Downscaled version from the source host. Any processing at the time of original publication is unknown; no additional processing for this use.

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