Nanaimo Bars & Birthday Wishes

My dad's birthday was yesterday... happy birthday! Dads are shockingly hard to buy for, and every year my sister and I have to bend our brains a bit to come up with something. This year we had a brilliant idea - we're making a care package! We're baking a bunch of his favourite goodies that freeze nicely, and giving him a couple big containers full of them. Cookies, nanaimo bars, haystacks... he'll love it (I hope!). Most of the baking will be done this weekend, and taken over when we visit for Thanksgiving, but my sister and I tried our hands at nanaimo bars lastnight.

This is my aunt's recipe for nanaimo bars, which honestly I remember being very different but I'm going to chalk that up to her having greater experience at it than we did. They taste amazing, but they were a bit messy! Chocolate topping was a little too hard, icing was not quite thick enough. Next time we'll know better. The raw egg in the crust is a little unnerving, but it tasted great regardless. I have been assured that this is how she makes them, and that no one has died of salmonella poisoning from eating them... that we know of... haha. Seriously though, they taste great. And that's what it really comes down to in my dad's books!

Aunty Jan's Nanaimo Bars

Base
2 oz. semisweet chocolate
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 cup coconut
1/2 cup butter
2 tbsp sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla

Filling
1/4 cup butter
3 tbsp milk
2 tbsp custard powder
2 cups icing sugar

Topping
4 oz. semisweet chocolate
1 tbsp butter