A three-layer, no-bake Canadian dessert that most Americans have never heard of sits in the revolving display case at Lauretta Jean's. every day of the week.

Owner Kate McMillen is among the few Portland-area bakers selling Nanaimo bars year-round, and many of her customers have no idea what they're looking at.

"They have a hard time pronouncing it, they have a hard time spelling it," McMillen told OPB in a Canada Day story published Tuesday, July 1. "And everyone is like, 'What does this mean? What's Nanaimo bars?' And so we have to tell people that it's a place in Canada and they're known for this bar."

The Nanaimo bar takes its name from a coastal city of about 100,000 on British Columbia's Vancouver Island. The dessert stacks a chocolaty, nutty wafer base under a custard filling and a chocolate ganache top.

Roughly one in three Canadian bakeries carries them, according to food historian Lenore Newman of the University of the Fraser Valley, who told OPB the treat remains a rarity south of the border.

McMillen first encountered the bars while working at a bakery in Missoula, Montana, during college. She didn't know Nanaimo was a real place until her father visited the city and mentioned it. That sent her down a research rabbit hole, and the bar eventually landed on Lauretta Jean's permanent menu.

Her version is gluten-free: a house-made graham cracker base built from oats and rice flour, toasted almonds, and vanilla pudding mix instead of the traditional Bird's custard powder. She finishes each bar with a sprinkle of Maldon salt. During an OPB visit in late May,

McMillen used a metal ruler and a hot knife to cut 20 identical rectangular bars from a chilled pan while the smell of vanilla drifted from baking pie crusts nearby.

A second Portland baker also keeps the tradition alive. Rachel Rencher, a professional flutist who runs Blue Sky Baking from her home in Southwest Portland, sells Nanaimo bars by special order at $24 per dozen, with a two-dozen minimum and two weeks' advance notice.

Rencher sticks with Bird's custard powder for its characteristic yellow filling and often omits coconut and nuts for large group orders due to allergy concerns.

Rencher first tasted a version of the bar growing up in eastern Washington in the 1970s, when her older sister made a similar recipe called "London Smog Bars" from a local church cookbook. Newman's research traces that name to a 1953 Vancouver Sun prize-winning recipe that noted the treat was also known as a Nanaimo bar.

The earliest known recipe appeared a year earlier, in a 1952 community cookbook published by the Women's Auxiliary to Nanaimo Hospital.

The dessert gained wider American exposure at Expo 86, the 1986 World Exposition in Vancouver. Newman told OPB the event was "one of the first times Vancouver really appeared on the world map, and people were exposed to Canadian cuisine for the first time."

McMillen didn't shy from the cross-border connection on Canada Day. She described Canada as "like our sister or our sibling" and said she hopes the two countries can maintain a strong relationship.

Weekend hours at Lauretta Jean's are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday; the shop is closed Tuesdays. Check laurettajeans.com for weekday hours. Blue Sky Baking orders can be placed through blueskybakingpdx.com.