Peppermint Bark
I’m not that big of a chocolate fan, but my husband is. He loves the fact that I like cooking with chocolate, or making candies and he gets most of them.
I got this idea from the peppermint bark that Williams Sonoma sells around Christmas. It’s horribly expensive but so easy to make. I ended up showing a friend how to make it last year and the husband has been bugging me for it ever since. There’s now 2 pounds of bark in the cupboard for him, so he wont complain any longer.
I started with a pound of each semi-sweet chocolate chips and white chocolate chips. Did you know that white chocolate chips are not actually chocolate? Its made from cocoa butter and milk solids usually flavored with vanilla. Interesting tidbit there. Also some peppermint candies, a good handful or so.
I always start by melting the white chocolate first. I like to put the white chocolate on the bottom to keep it nice and smooth, plus its not as easy to spread as semi-sweet. You could always go for the marbled look, so then it doesn’t really matter what order you melt them in. I just happen to like the two toned look.
Once its all nice and smooth, remove the bowl from the heat and set aside to let it cool. Then its on to the candies.
Unwrap the candies and put them in a plastic bag. You want to beat them with something like a rolling pin, hammer, or meat mallet (like me). The towel just helps me to not break the bag as easily on the bottom and the cutting board is just so I don’t damage the counter top when I miss.
Now go ahead and make some noise… Get that aggression out.
You want to end up with some fine powdery bits as well as some chunks. Make sure the chunks aren’t too big or you might hurt a tooth biting into it.
Empty the bag of broken candy into a sifter and sift out the powdery bits. You want to keep both sizes separate since they have different places they are going to go.
Now we get to the good stuff.
Mix the candy powder into the white chocolate, stirring until completely incorporated. The chocolate should be nice and smooth still but much cooler. I like adding the powder to the white chocolate not only for mint flavor but also for the color. It looks awesome having little colorful specs in the milky white.
Now you need to spread the white chocolate onto a cookie sheet.
I like using a 10″ x 15″ cookie sheet for this, that way it’s not too thick or thin. Try to get it as even as possible. At least I try to get it as even as possible. That’s just because I’m crazy.
I still think having a marble look to it would be awesome to try. That way you don’t have to be neat!
Now set the pan aside and let it harden, it shouldn’t take too long since it was already mostly cooled. Once the white chocolate has hardened, start melting the rest of the chocolate in the same way.
There is a point during the melting process that you have to watch out for. It’s called the “husband wants chocolate” side effect. By this time, the yummy smell of the chocolate has started going through the rest of the house, tempting him to come out of hiding and try to stick a spoon or pretzels in the melted chocolate.
Banish him to the other room until it’s done. Trust me.
After the chocolate has melted, quickly and gently spread it evenly over the white chocolate. If you work gently enough you wont have any streaks in your chocolate.
Add the larger chunks of peppermint from earlier onto the top of the chocolate. Try to spread it evenly around so that every bite will have a nice amount of mint in it.
Let it sit and harden in a cool place for about an hour or so, or stick it in the fridge for a few minutes to help it harden up quicker.
When it is finally hard, twist the pan slightly (I have cheap pans so they warp and bend easily), hopefully your chocolate will dislodge and you can flip it out of the pan. Break it into smaller pieces like you would peanut brittle and store in an air tight container.
Yum!
Now the husband will be happy.