Nanaimo Bars Late Revealing

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.

I realized that I've already failed at my new year's resolution, and late is sometimes not better than never, but I figured I might as well give it a go. I think the hardest part for me was actually looking for all the random ingredients and then realizing that these bars take more than just a couple of hours to make (overnight needed). I also realized that I should've read the Daring Baker's forum first so that I could've saved myself from scraping up one of my very nice baking pans with a spatula trying to pry these suckers out. Sigh. One of these days I'll actually find 25 hours in a day to do everything that I want. Until then, here's the best I can give you.

Nanaimo Bars with Gluten-Free Graham Crackers

Freshly made and still gooey

New Year's Resolution

I know. I haven't been back in a very long time. I have no excuses. Well... actually I have a lot of them, but I'll spare you the sad sob story and get straight to the point.... I'm tired. Yup, lo and behold - this baking fanatic is actually tired. And what could be the cause you wonder? The joy of my life and the bane of my existence all at the same time: WORK. Seriously, it's such a godsend that I was able to find a job in this market, but damn, it really puts a damper on my baking.

But to stop myself from being the world's smallest violin playing the world's saddest song, I made myself a new year's resolution. And if you know me well enough (probably not since I've only been blogging for a few months so I might as well just tell you), I don't like making resolutions. I think they are just empty promises with short term benefits. Now I know I'm most likely treading on some very heavy toes at the moment, but this blog isn't about me and my disbelief in resolutions, so I'm going to move on with my story and hope you keep reading.

My resolution this year is to try, and the operative word IS try, to bake at least once a week and to blog about it. I think this will help all the hungry coworkers at my job site AND fulfill some deep, carnal desire inside me to create fabulous tasting goodies. Great right? Fantastic idea huh? So what's stopping me already as this new year has just only begun? Well I'm realizing that I get stuck in what I want to bake. It's nice to be a part of the Daring Baker's ring since they mandate what I make each month for challenges (and boy are they challenges), but what about my regular weekly baking excursions? BF told me I should just get a cookbook and bake all of the recipes in it, but then that would be SO Julie and Julia and that's not what I'm about. There's also the fact that I'm fairly picky about what I want to bake and really only want to bake what I think is interesting to try out. Silly, yes? Can you see how I've just put myself between a rock and a hard place?

Anyways, this issue is still something that I'm working out, but at least for the moment I've got a list of things that I need to bake as you can see to the right. So with all of that, New Year, here I come (Insert War Cry Here).

Pooped

Ok, so I have been baking, only I haven't actually had the time or the weather to actually take any pictures. Sucky, right? I know. Norcal was a dreary mess most of last week and this week has just been a craze at work (wow, I can actually say that now) so I haven't really given myself a chance to enjoy anything but the barely-there 7 hours of sleep I'm getting. I've also gotten sick (just a cold, not h1n1 as everyone keeps asking) and have just started to feel somewhat human again.

So what have I made? Well, I don't really want to give them away until I can get some pictures in! I'm hoping this weekend will give me a chance to catch up on that and since the weather is going to take a turn for the worse again starting Monday. I'm also leaving to go home for 2 weeks so I really won't be able to post anything then. If only there were more hours in the day.