Vegan Nanaimo

 I'd literally never heard of these until we went to a VR parkrun in Winchester, long before the pandemic. 

They're Canadian in origin, and are biscuity, chocolatey, coconutty, custardy goodness. 

I know we ALL hate it when people write reams and reams before the recipe, so I'll get straight into it. 

Ingredients

Base

200g digestive biscuits (you can use hobnobs etc, depends on what you have)

150g sunflower margarine

100g desiccated coconut

50g ground almonds

40g cocoa powder

60g caster sugar 

Custard layer

60g Flora Plant Butter at room temperature(essential if you want a sturdy custard, but you can use margarine and just reduce the milk if you're not fussed about structural integrity)

250g icing sugar

3tbsps custard powder (Birds is vegan!)

3tbsps plant based milk

Chocolate topping

200g plain chocolate

3tbsps sunflower margarine

Method

1. Start by lining a square brownie tin with cling film (this makes it easier to turn out. If you have a silicon pan, definitely use it).
2. Melt the margarine in a pan on a low heat, once melted, stir in the cocoa powder and sugar until fully combined
3. Meanwhile, crush the biscuits with a rolling pin, add to a big mixing bowl along with ground almonds and coconut. 
4. Combine all base ingredients, spoon into prepared tin and press down to make an even layer. Freeze for at least an hour.
5. While that chills you can crack on with the custard. Literally all you need to do with this is put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix with an electric mixer. Then once the base is chilled, spread evenly over the top, and then back into the freezer for an hour.
6. Final stage! Break your chocolate into chunks, and put it in a bain-marie (bowl over a pan of boiling water to us lay-folk) along with the margarine, melt, stir and then pour onto chilled layers. Back in the freezer for at least half an hour, and then you can eat it! I'd recommend cutting it into 16, but 9 works too. Top tip - keep it in the fridge unless you want it to go squidgy.

I have tried out lots of different variations of this, but the above recipe is has turned out perfectly every time.