Late on a Saturday afternoon in 2010, less than two weeks before Christmas, Stefan and I were sitting around in our farmhouse in Germany 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 from a tree lost instead of a farm outside the city as we’d hoped.
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 I knew that if we both did the work together on Sunday, we could still at least have a bunch of Christmas goodness for ourselves. Apparently none of our friends are as homestead-ish as we are and not even family sent cookies (homemade or otherwise) this year — which has always been something we counted on. They have sent an array delicious Christmas cookies for as long as I have known Stefan. 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 is returned 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 pantry 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!
Our Chocolate Bark
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. Dried cherries and pistachios are also a good combination.
We baked and mixed and melted galore …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. I think throwing something like Oreos would be delicious in bark as well.
I have tried making this a few different ways, but the trick to bark is not getting it too thick. In fact, I find that thinner is better – but it does sometimes melt quickly in the hand. I used the leftover melted chocolate from the Lubkuchen and spread it on waxed paper in a thin layer. Then I sprinkled the additional ingredients on top and pressed them down as necessary to make sure they stayed in the chocolate. Most of the time we just went by feeling instead of exact measurements.
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 onto a baking sheet covered with wax paper and spread thinly (about 1/4-inch thick).
Sprinkle on nuts, dried fruit and other ingredients.
Drizzle a second kind of chocolate over the entire spread, if desiered. (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
Ingredients
- 8 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate
- 2 oz white chocolate
- 3/4 cup cranberries
- 1/4 cup chopped almonds
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
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
Ingredients
- 8 oz white chocolate
- 2 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate
- 3/4 cup hazelnuts
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!
Yum!!! Do you need MY address??? ;-D Looks like you had a busy day – but fun too!
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! 😉
I am actually drooling right now.
Stefan told me already about it ! But seeing the photos – save a lot for me and of course for Kurt !
Looks mouthwatering !!!!!
Have all the chocolate now while you still can!
There is supposed to be a shortage of it by 2020. More here in German – There is no future for Chocolate Santas:
http://web.de/magazine/weihnachten/aktuell/16854130-zukunft-schoko-weihnachtsmaenner.html#
Oh no! Not a chocolate shortage! Don’t tell my husband and father-in-law — that will just destroy their Christmas altogether. 😉 Interesting article but not all that surprising really. Quality chocolate has always been expensive and getting more so…middle class people have rarely bought Godiva or similar specialty brands just for fun. Will be interesting to see how it develops in real life.