In late October I travelled to my hometown of Blaine, Washington, to read from my book at the local library. Sixteen folks attended, 13 of them were family, one was a classmate, and two were strangers (that I now count as friends). I had a blast! I felt loved and supported, and I sold one book. To my cousin.
As always when I visit my hometown, memories flood back. This time it was food memories. I must have been hungry. And it was desserts that I thought of. Like Nanaimo bars, that originated in the town of Nanaimo, British Columbia. Blaine is a border town, right next to Canada, and there are and were many Canadians in the community. Therefore, at school functions and bake sales, Nanaimo bars would show up. These rich 3-layered bars with chocolate and custard are delicious. So delicious that when I started teaching my oldest son to bake, I pulled out an old grade-school recipe book and taught him how to make them. We even made sure we had the correct custard powder to make them exactly as the recipe required. They became my son’s favorite dessert, his specialty. My son was a math geek at an early age, and one time he decided to calculate the number of tablespoons of butter in each Nanaimo bar square. Trust me, you don’t want to know.
Blaine also has a lot of people of Icelandic heritage. Even we folks of Norwegian heritage learned the intricacies of making Vinarterta, a scrumptious Icelandic cake made with numerous layers of thinly rolled cookies, Italian prunes, and a light frosting. It is cut into tall squares and is visually gorgeous with the dark and light stripes of fruit and cake.
I also remembered these little spice cookies that my Icelandic-heritage friend shared with me in middle school. They were tiny brown cookies that were perfectly round, the size of a thumbnail. Months ago, I had asked my friend for the recipe, and she said she didn’t remember them. My online searching at the time didn’t turn up anything that looked right. But visiting Blaine reminded me of those little cookies. I was on the search again. I was pretty sure the cookies were called Pfeffernusse. That’s Icelandic, right?
Turns out I was wrong. They were not Icelandic. I finally found a recipe that looked right, and the website said they were Mennonite/German cookies. Woops. Pfeffernusse is German, and the translation is pepper nuts. They actually have black pepper in them. You know how sometimes we transpose letters or numbers and things come out kind of backwards? My brain transposed the wrong friend into my memory. It was my Mennonite-heritage friend who shared the lovely little brown spice cookies with me, not my Icelandic-heritage friend. My sister-in-law helped me track down a family friend’s pepper nuts recipe. I recruited my younger son and his girlfriend to help me make them once I returned to Spokane. They are still good!
We ate and gave away all the Pfeffernusse/pepper nuts cookies. It’s okay though, because they are super small, and therefore have zero calories. Now what am I craving? It’s cold and rainy out, so maybe something warm… Clam Chowder is another classic Blaine recipe. I remember clam-digging for horse clams at low tide in cold rainy weather. Just thinking about that is making me cold. A cup of hot cocoa sounds much easier right now.
P.S. A better blogger would have included the cookie recipes along with beautiful pictures of the baking process in a clean gorgeous kitchen with fancy gadgets like a stand-mixer. But that is not me. I found the classic Nanaimo bar recipe, linked below. I’m having challenges with the direct link to a Pfeffernusse recipe, but go to Thefrugalgirl.com, and search for Pfeffernusse. Or I can type up the recipe my sister-in-law found upon request. And finally, I don’t actually have a Vinarterta recipe, because other family members make this one. But if you really want it, send me a note and I’ll find a Blaine recipe for you.
https://www.canadianliving.com/food/baking-and-desserts/recipe/classic-nanaimo-bars
Michelle Eames 