The Canadian city of Nanaimo, in British Columbia , has been a scrappy outpost of the Hudson’s Bay Company, a coal mining center and a timber town. But its place in history may be forever entwined with its culinary namesake, one of the world’s sweetest treats. The Nanaimo bar (pronounced nuh-NYE-mo) is a three-layer no-bake square that for the last seven decades or so has been a steadfast source of comfort to Canadians at weddings and funerals, birthdays and bar mitzvahs. Across the country, you’ll find the sugary bars for sale at small-town gas stations and supermarkets, where they compete with Nanaimo bar baking kits. The Tim Hortons restaurant chain even created a filled doughnut with the flavors of the Nanaimo bar for the nation’s sesquicentennial in 2017, a nod to its status.

Source: New York Times March 22, 2019 16:30 UTC