Name: Creme De Menthe Nanaimo Bars
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 85 min
Ingredients: ½ cup Butter (unsalted); 1/4 cup Granulated Sugar; 6 tbsp Cocoa Powder; 1 Large Egg (beaten); 1 1/4 cup Graham Cracker Crumbs; ½ cup Finely Chopped Almonds; 1 cup Unsweetened Coconut Flakes; 1 cup Butter (Softened); 1/3 cup Creme de Menthe liqueur; 3 tbsp Custard Powder or Cook-and-Serve Vanilla Pudding Powder (If using pudding powde: NOT instant!); 4-5 cups Confectioners / Icing / Powdered Sugar; 6 oz Semi Sweet Baking Chocolate Squares; 3 tbsp Butter

Creme de Menthe Nanaimo Bars

Creme de Menthe day is coming up, so I figure it’s time to share my recipe for Creme de Menthe Nanaimo bars!

While this is a new blog entry, the recipe was first published way back - ten years ago! - in my first cookbook, “The Spirited Baker: Intoxicating Desserts & Potent Potables”.

It’s a fun cookbook - FULL of fun, tasty recipes using spirits and liqueurs for flavour. The first chapter even tells you how to make all kinds of liqueurs and flavour extracts of your own!

In fact, you may even have recognized it from the cover of that book:

If you’d like to check it out, you can order your hard copy here on my website, through Amazon, or through any major bookseller.

What are Nanaimo Bars?

If you’re not Canadian, you’re probably wondering what a Nanaimo Bar is, so let me back up a bit.

It’s a no-bake, 3 layer bar that is *quite* sweet... and immensely popular here - it’s a traditional Canadian treat!. They’ve been around since the 1950s, and originated in Nanaimo, BC.

The bottom later is chocolate, almonds, and graham crackers, the middle layer is a buttercream that’s been thickened with custard powder*, and then the whole thing is topped off with a thick chocolate ganache, that sets up like a frosting.

The middle layer CAN be flavoured - as it is here, with my Creme de Menthe Nanaimo bars - but usually isn’t, when purchased. The vast majority of Nanaimo Bars that you’ll see out in the wild have the standard yellowish center.

... and these can be purchased almost anywhere, mind you. Gas stations, grocery stores, festivals, farmers markets, and more. You can even buy boxed mixes to make them.

However, I like to mix it up every once in a while, and Creme de Menthe really works well with the other main flavours in Nanaimo Bars. You can even add a little green food colouring to the buttercream, if you like - I think the minty green colour is really pretty with this bar.

It makes a festive addition to holiday trays, by the way.

* If you don’t have access to custard powder - Bird’s is the most popular brand - you can always use pudding powder. Just make sure to use the “cook and serve” type, not instant.

More Nanaimo Bar Recipes!

Here are a few of my Nanaimo Bar recipes:

Gluten-Free Nanaimo Bar Brownies
Maraschino Cherry Nanaimo Bars
Mocha Nanaimo Bars
Pumpkin Spice Nanaimo Bars

Of course, Nanaimo bars are just one example of the many treats we have here in Canada. The US may be known for their sugar consumption, but Canadians are the real Sweet Tooth MVPs, IMHO.

Hell, in Quebec, there’s a pie that starts out with literally packing a pie shell with brown sugar. If that’s not hardcore, I don’t know what is!

Nanaimo bars are just one of many fantastic Canadian recipes in my cookbook, "More Than Poutine: Favourite Foods from my Home and Native Land”. "More than Poutine" is a Canadian cookbook like no other - written by a Canadian while living away, it includes both traditional home cooking recipes, as well as accurate homemade versions of many of the snacks, sauces, convenience foods, and other food items that are hard to come by outside of Canada!

Order your copy here on this site, through Amazon, or through any major bookseller!

More Canadian Goodies

Canadian goodies go WAY beyond Nanaimo Bars alone. Here are some other favourites:

Clodhoppers
Confetti Bars
Gluten-Free Beaver Tails
Maple Butter Tarts
Moon Mist Ice Cream
Puffed Wheat Squares
Sucre à la Crème
Tiger Tail Ice Cream

Anyway, on to that recipe!

Note: This site is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for the site to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites. While I’ll only ever link to items that I, personally, wholeheartedly recommend, I do need to put that disclosure out there!

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