Dec 13, 2010 Posted by Tiffany on Dec 13, 2010 in Christmas, Entertaining, Featured, Foodie Desires, Recipes | 4 comments

A Chocolate Bark Extravaganza

Thanks to all of you who entered and made the Mackenzie Frames giveaway contest a huge success! Don’t forget to take advantage of the exclusive NOH reader discount at Mackenzie Frames’ Etsy shop which was extended!  Save 15% on every order until January 3rd! Just enter NOHCOMPETITION when you checkout to save!!

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Late on Saturday afternoon, Stefan and I were sitting around and thinking about our plans for the rest of the weekend. We’d gone out running errands in the morning, buying everything imaginable (besides the tree we wanted), came home exhausted, tried to get Mack to nap, failed and finally bought our Christmas tree two blocks down the street (after our two failed attempts to buy local — but I will get into that later). As we sat on the couch drying off from the drizzle outside while walking home from the Christmas tree lot, we somehow got on the topic of Christmas cookies. So I pulled up the recipes I’d found at least a month earlier with ideas of making Lebkuchen (a typical German Christmas cookie) and chocolate bark. But since my schedule started looking a bit more hectic, I’d basically scrapped the ideas. Initially I wanted to send a bunch of it out to friends and family…but with the holidays rapidly approaching, that just seemed like it wasn’t going to happen.

But if we both did the work on Sunday, we could still at least have a bunch of Christmas goodness for ourselves. Apparently none of our friends are as homesteadish as we are and not even family sent cookies (homemade or otherwise) this year — which has always been something we counted on. Not that I’m blaming them or that we’re upset — I totally understand the lack of time, interest and general lack of appreciation that comes back sometimes. It just sorta caught us off guard.

So with only a few hours of shopping left in the weekend (you can rarely shop here in Germany on Sundays), I turned to Mackenzie and let her make the decision about whether we should go buy the additional things we needed to go crazy in cookie land.

“Hey Mackenzie, should we go shopping?”

“Shopping? Ok!” That was followed by some nodding and she went over to the DVD player, turned it off and headed for the door.

If that wasn’t a clear answer, I don’t know what would be.

So off we went to buy Lebkuchen ingredients and a few extra goodies for bark. I already had a ton of baking chocolate here so that was not going to be an issue. I also thought I had tons of nuts here for us to use but we have been plagued by moths this year and apparently they love a good almond. So those web-filled nuts definitely did not make their way into the chocolate bark!

But what did find its way in was whole hazelnuts, small chunks of dried mango, crushed almonds and dried cranberries. Not all in one of course…but a little bit of this and that wherever it seemed to fit.

We baked and mixed and melted galore yesterday…and to be honest, I felt like Stefan was doing most of the work while I just gathered things and supervised. He is really quite fabulous in the kitchen! After 7 hours of hard work, we were finally done and have a about 3 dozen large cookies and two big boxes of bark to show for our efforts. And oh my gosh is this stuff good!

Bark is really quite simple to make but you will want a double boiler to melt the chocolate. You can do it in the microwave or set a bowl inside a pot, but the real deal (which can be bought at IKEA for under €10) is well worth the investment to keep you from making a huge mess.

If you want to give this as a gift, you can also just break the bark small enough so it fits in a a glass jar and cover the lid with fabric or wrapping paper.

So after that long dissertation, here are the chocolate bark recipes. If you don’t like the combinations used, you can really use just about any sort of nuts, dried fruit and even candy that you have on hand or think would be interesting. We went with what was available and what we like since we’ve never tried this before. But next year, I might be smashing up some Oreo’s to throw in the bark too!

We found it easiest to melt a bunch of chocolate at once (usually double what we needed for a batch) and then threw the nuts or dried fruit into a small mixing bowl which would then be the mixing receptacle once the chocolate was melted. Most of the time we just went by feeling instead of exact measurements. And even though it might look like it’s all nuts and fruits and no chocolate, trust me, it still comes out tasting unbelievable.

I’m giving you the directions first because it’s the same process every time…which is really the beauty and simplicity of making chocolate bark.

Directions

Put a small amount of water in the bottom of a pot that will fit your double boiler and place the boiler inside the pot.

Break up the chocolate into chunks and slowly melt it at medium to medium-high heat, stirring occasionally.

Once the chocolate is melted, pour it into a small mixing bowl with nuts, fruit, etc.

Spread the mixture onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper.

Drizzle the second kind of chocolate over the entire spread out mix. (You can also do this after the chocolate has been chilled but it will melt together better if they’re both still warm.)

Refrigerate it (or set it outside if your trays won’t fit in your fridge and it’s cold out) until it’s solid.
Break it up into smaller pieces for snacking. Store everything in the fridge or freezer.

Chocolate Hazelnut Bark

Ingredients

• 8 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate
• 2 oz white chocolate
• 3/4 cup hazelnuts

Chocolate Bark with Almonds and Cranberries

Chocolate Bark with Almonds and Cranberries

Ingredients

• 8 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate
• 2 oz white chocolate
• 3/4 cup cranberries
• 1/4 cup chopped almonds

Chocolate Mango Bark

Chocolate Mango Bark

Ingredients

• 8 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate
• 2 oz white chocolate
• 3/4 cup dried mango, chopped into 1/2″ chunks

Mango gets REALLY chewy and kinda hard when it’s dried so you have to make the chunks small enough that you can still eat them without looking like a cow chewing on straw for hours!

White Chocolate Bark with Almonds and Cranberries

White Chocolate Bark with Almonds and Cranberries

Ingredients

• 8 oz white chocolate
• 2 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate
• 3/4 cup slivered almonds
• 3/4 cup cranberries

Lightly toast the almonds in a pan (without oil or butter) for a few minutes at medium heat until they are just barely golden brown.

White Chocolate Hazelnut Bark

White Chocolate Hazelnut Bark

Ingredients

• 8 oz white chocolate
• 2 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate
• 3/4 cup hazelnuts

White Chocolate Almond Bark

White Chocolate Almond Bark

Ingredients

• 8 oz white chocolate
• 2 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate
• 1/2 cup chopped almonds

Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Bark

Ingredients

• 8 oz dark bitter-sweet chocolate
• 3/4 cup hazelnuts

We actually made this batch for someone who can’t have white or milk chocolate because he’s lactose intolerant. Boy was he thrilled!

4 Responses to “A Chocolate Bark Extravaganza”

1. Carrie says:

   December 13, 2010 at 3:47 pm

   Yum!!! Do you need MY address??? ;-D Looks like you had a busy day – but fun too!

   Reply
   • Tiffany says:

     December 13, 2010 at 4:05 pm

     It was exhausting but definitely worth it! We’re still trying to decide if we’ll let ourselves gain 20 pounds while we eat all this or send some of it off here and there. The Lebkuchen are actually supposed to be best in 4-6 weeks time so they’re actually ideal for mailing, even overseas!

     Reply
2. Scary Mommy says:

   December 13, 2010 at 4:09 pm

   I am actually drooling right now.

   Reply
3. Doris says:

   December 13, 2010 at 11:06 pm

   Stefan told me already about it ! But seeing the photos – save a lot for me and of course for Kurt !
   Looks mouthwatering !!!!!

   Reply