Better late than never Valentine's treat

This finishing act was a bit of a cheat since my partner, Dan, is a chef.  Some of my favourite time spent with him is in the kitchen baking or cooking.  Mostly baking.  I like following a recipe so baking works for me.  We meant to make these on the weekend but ended up having friends visit from Toronto so we went skating on the canal and played our favorite Cranium Family Edition instead. 

Last night we dove into the cocoa, yum, and made our nanaimo bars.  Dan is from New Zealand and had no idea what nanaimo bars are or where Nanaimo is! lol.  A special Canadian treat indeed & especially nice to eat while watching all those Olympic athletes in BC (where Nanaimo is located as well) burn off 1000s of calories every second ;-).  And even though Valentine's day has passed we decided to make them pink anyway like these.  The recipe comes from Barb at http://vinolucistyle.com.  I have a really great recipe for raw brownies, which I'll have to post at some point, so I used the very, very, very expensive but SCRUMPTIOUS Raw Chocolate Cacao Powder that I had on hand.  Barb used a vanilla pudding powder but I used vanilla custard powder since I actually made my grocery list from the mybakingaddiction website instead but I would imagine that both would be fine.

Aside from eating the final delights, the highlight of the night was that Dan let me use one of his chef's knives to chop the almonds.  He hasn't sharpened it in awhile thank goodness as I am more likely to cut off my finger than actually chop the almonds!

In the end, we were sat in front of the tv with a cup of tea and these delicious little treats.  Dan liked them & requested that next time we flavour the middle layer with mint.  I'm thinking I'll try that for St. Patrick's Day!!  They were also a big hit with my co-workers during our coffee break this morning.

Did I mention I'm an amateur photographer as well?  If anyone has any feedback on how to improve my pictures, please advise.  I know, I know.  I should start with taking the picture in focus ;-)  But today let's just be thankful that I made the darn cookies!