Archives for December 2013

This tasty treat is a traditional Canadian dessert. What I didn’t realize was that it was actually from Canada. Silly me had grown up in Washington state, and just thought everyone had these tasty treats. Naturally they were at the local Starbucks-so wouldn’t all of the Starbucks carry them? Apparently not, it appears that only the Pacific Northwest and Canada has this. Well now all of you Texans can try something new and bite into one of these super sweet and rich Nanaimo bars.

 

Chocolate Coconut Layer

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 3/4 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1 cup Sweet coconut
• 1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts

Custard Buttercream Layer

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 3 tablespoons heavy cream or milk
• 2 tablespoons custard powder or Vanilla Jello Pudding Powder
• 2 cups confectioners’ sugar

Chocolate Layer

• 4 (1 ounce) squares semisweet baking chocolate
• 2 tablespoons butter

Directions

1. Coconut Layer: Beat the egg in a small bowl and put aside. In the top of a double boiler, combine 1/2 cup butter, white sugar and cocoa powder. Stir occasionally until melted and smooth. Temper the egg by slowly adding a 1/4 cup of the warm chocolate mixture to the egg, whisking constantly. Add the egg back into the remaining chocolate mixture, whisking constantly until combined. Stir mixture until thick, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat and mix in the graham cracker crumbs, coconut and almonds. Press into the bottom of an ungreased 8×8 inch pan.
2. Custard Layer: Cream together 1/2 cup butter, heavy cream and custard powder until light and fluffy. Mix in the confectioners’ sugar until smooth. Spread over the bottom layer in the pan. Chill to set.
3. Chocolate Layer: While the second layer is chilling, melt the semisweet chocolate and 2 tablespoons butter together in a double boiler. Let cool until no longer hot to the touch. Spread over the chilled bars. Let the chocolate set in refrigerator before cutting into squares. (I let it set about 2 hours before cutting it, when the chocolate was no longer oozing, but was not quite hard yet.)

Peanut Butter cookies are a classic cookie, practically a staple food. This recipe is a traditional recipe that you would find in your mothers or your grandmothers cook book.

  

 Ingredients:

 

Recently we have been posting fun food facts on our Facebook page. As a result, hundreds of people have been viewing these facts, commenting on them, and some people are even adding additional facts in correspondence to that day! WE ARE LOVING IT!

As a result, we decided to add some food facts to our blog. We have done extensive research and are legitimately citing our sources! WILD-it is as if we are back in college.

Food facts for today are about Animal Crackers:

As you are already aware, every child in the USA has grown up eating animal crackers. To us, it is a nostalgic cookie/cracker that has lasted through the ages and is still enjoyed by children and adults. I am sure you can recall a time or two when you were a tinsy-tiny-tot at the grocery store with your mother, begging her to buy you just one box of these delectable snacks.  If she didn’t buy these for you, there was at least once in your lifetime where you opened your packed lunch in the school cafeteria, to find the iconic cute red little box with the white soft string hanging from it. When that surprise happened, you could either keep your cookies and be the envy of the lunch room, or you could trade them for any hankering you may have had that day.

The packaging makes the treat, consolidated into a tiny box that you can carry, already full of cookies-literally perfect! In fact, this string on the box was first added right before Christmas time, with the intention of hanging these boxes on Christmas Trees.

It was in 1902 where the main hype of todays animal crackers began, known as  “Barnum’s Animals”. Inside each and every box, there are 17 different types of animals! Another interesting fact is that in 2002, where   Barnum’s Animals were celebrating their centennial, they had the public vote on a new animal to add to the current 17 types. The proud winner was the koala, beating its opponents of the walrus, penguin, and the cobra. Despite the koalas feat, there have actually been a total of 54 different animal cracker shapes produced. Only 37 of these animals belonging to the classic brand of Barnum’s Animals.

Overall, Nabisco is now the producer of Barnum’s Animal Crackers, making 7 million crackers every day!

Not only have these crackers played an important role in our childhoods, these cookies have been immortalized through movies from the Marx Brothers and Shirley Temple, such as the video clip below.

 

 

 

Works Cited:

Liberman, Sherri. American Food by the Decades. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011. Print.