Vancouver Island University hopes to set the bar by creating Canada's biggest Nanaimo bar.
Students from the university's culinary arts, professional baking and pastry arts programs will team up to try to break the record on campus on May 17 in a fundraising event with the goal to make a Nanaimo bar weighing close to 500 kilograms 鈥� 21 metres long and 91 centimetres wide. The current record holders hail from Levack, Ont., thanks to their 240kg bar made in 2020.
Aron Weber, VIU instructor and professional baking and pastry arts chairperson, said the idea was conceived by students, who will use the City of Nanaimo's official recipe, although ingredient amounts will have to be upped. He said it will involve 125kg of butter, 68kg of dark chocolate, 77kg of graham cracker crumbs and 28kg of coconut.
"For us as professional chefs, our faculty's worked in large hotels and large operations before," Weber said. "So it is something students learn in this program as well 鈥� how to upscale recipes to work in volume."
Weber said money raised will go toward new ovens, which will benefit students.
"Some of the equipment, it's been very good quality equipment, we've had it for years, but definitely they're starting to get a little bit tired鈥�" he said. "With these new ovens, [they] can sustain our program, which is probably our biggest cost as far as equipment, for another 20 years," he said.
Involving the Guinness World Records would have been cost-prohibitive, said Weber, but national agencies 鈥� the Baking Association of Canada and the Culinary Federation of Canada 鈥� will be certifying the attempt. It will be a large undertaking.
"We're going to have some of the base components [pre-made], and we're going to transport that over to [event area]," he said. "We'll transfer that over frozen, then we have some good food safety happening there. We're going to be building a large frame that our carpentry students will be doing, and we'll be pouring the chocolate over the large Nanaimo bar."
Weber likes the classic Nanaimo bar and said it's often imitated, but never duplicated.
"I worked in Washington, D.C., for quite a few years, and I always would do an event for the Canadian Embassy every year, and I was making Nanaimo bars and [someone] said, 'Oh, you're making 'New York Slice,' and I was quite offended. Apparently there was a Canadian pastry chef that was working in New York and brought the Nanaimo bar to New York. But if you name it Nanaimo bar in New York, nobody's going buy it, right? 鈥� but definitely, I set him straight," said Weber.
The event takes place May 17 from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Windsor Plywood Trades Discovery Centre at Nanaimo campus.
The university is seeking sponsors as well as financial donations. For more information, e-mail Andrea Tolentino from the VIU Foundation at andrea.tolentino@viu.ca.
