During the holidays, one of my favorite treats to make for friends and family is Peppermint Bark. Every Christmas, I seem to find more and more people who know what this concoction is, but when I first found out about it...boy, it felt like my little candied secret covered in peppermint. Further, I'm now beginning to see this treat in the specialty candy section of food stores like Whole Foods and Fresh Market. Often, one small container of peppermint bark sells for around $10, and is not nearly as tasty as the homemade kind! Peppermint Bark is easy to make, cheap to make (about $5 for this whole batch), and in many ways, tastes like an Andie's Mint.
Peppermint bark is one of those tasty treats that you only really see during Christmas. It consists of one layer of white chocolate, one layer of regular chocolate (milk, or dark), and one layer of crushed peppermint (usually crushed up candy canes). For this holiday season, I made it for Stan and Joan, the neighbors next door, and for Joe's fabulous family up in North Carolina.
Peppermint Bark
For this recipe, I always advise dark chocolate. It takes the flavor to a whole other level! As for the candy canes, you can certainly use regular peppermint candies, but it's always a lot more work than crushing 12 candy canes. ALSO: it's a very good idea to go ahead and crush the candy canes first. Since you'll need to have your eyes on the melting chocolate, you won't have much free time, or free hands to be unwrapping and crushing candy canes at the same time. So, I usually crush the candy canes first, and then reserve them until it's time to add them to the melting chocolate.
* 1 12 oz. bag dark chocolate, melted* 1 12 oz. bag white chocolate, melted
* 1 box candy canes (around 12 candy canes), crushed
* 1/4-1/2 cup skim milk, or cream (for melting the chocolate)
1.) Pour two 1/4 cups of skim milk or cream into two separate saucepans. Open bags of chocolate and empty them into saucepans--white chocolate in one pan, and dark chocolate in the other. Now would also be a good time to crush the candy canes before you start the melting process. First, unwrap all of the candy canes and throw them into a double-bagged ziplock bag. Close both zippers, place on a sturdy, and non-sensitive counter, and take a can of soup, peas, whatever you have in the cabinet, and bang the candy canes until they are in SMALL pieces. The bigger the pieces, the harder the peppermint bark will be to eat, so smaller is always better here....and that's what she said, haha. Moving on.....
2.) Turn the heat on medium for both saucepans. Don't worry if you're afraid this process will take forever on medium--melting chocolate is freakishly easy and only requires a little bit of heat for the melted chocolate to mix in with your cream or milk.
3.) Stir both pans of chocolate every few minutes so that you don't burn the chocolate and can integrate the cream mixture with the chocolate (this process will probably take around 5-10 minutes for each pan, depending on the heat of your "medium" setting). NOTE: You'll probably notice that the white chocolate doesn't melt as smoothly, or evenly as the dark chocolate. For years, this difference confused me, but there appears to be a very simple answer: white chocolate just isn't chocolate. Apparently, it is a man-made confection that comes from a combination of cocoa, sugar, and milk. Unlike regular chocolate that has natural compounds and thus, naturally wants to stay in a smooth mixture when melting, white chocolate has the tendency to split into an oily substance and a thicker, gobbier substance. If this happens to you (and it will), feel free to drain a few ounces of the oily substance out of the saucepan before continuing to the next step. If you're stubborn and just think the problem will solve itsself, you're wrong because you would need to re-emulsify the compound, and that's just...well, a lot of work.4.) Once melted, pour white chocolate onto a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet, and spread thinly/evenly with a spoon.
5.) Pour dark chocolate on top of the white chocolate thinly/evenly, and spread over white chocolate with a spoon. Top with crushed peppermint, and press peppermint into the chocolate so that it will be more inclined to stick in the candy.
6.) Put bark in the freezer for about an hour to an hour and a half. Then, you are ready to cut the candy, or reserve in the refrigerator until ready to cut. I've seen numerous ways of cutting the candy. If you're like me, and like to savor the cutting process, just dig in with a sharp knife and cut out your pieces. However, since "bark" is in the title, feel free to perform a more dangerous, but effective cutting technique: bang the knife into the bark repeatedly until it breaks off into shards. This will give you a more aesthetically pleasing-bark-like effect. Enjoy!
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