Peppermint Bark

posted by Erica on December 10, 2009
4 comments »
It’s winter.  There’s no turning back.  Temperatures are consistently in the 30s and CT got its first full fledged snow storm this week.  And although I’m starting to experience a little seasonal affective disorder with the sun going down at 4:30 everyday, there’s nothing like some holiday baking to make me happy, and fat.
We had a girls movie night last night and I decided to make a little something for my friends, one of my favorite wintery treats — peppermint bark.
I consider it to be a very sophisticated candy, probably because it’s mostly found in stores like Williams-Sonoma, which can make it a very expensive candy as well.  So being the thrifty grad student I am ( ignoring the fact that I went to the outlets twice last week), I decided to concoct my own peppermint bark. 

I was surprised how easy it was to make.  For some reason I figured the recipe would be more complicated than just melting chocolate and sprinkling it with peppermint candy, but there wasn’t really much more to it.  It’s important to use good quality dark chocolate, but other than that this is also a pretty affordable baking endeavor. 

Keep warm and have a great weekend!  Brrrrrrr look at all that snow…

 
Peppermint Bark

1 cup bittersweet chocolate
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate
2 cups white chocolate 
2 tsp vegetable oil
12 candy canes 

– Line the bottom and sides of a 9×13″ pan with tinfoil, smoothing out any wrinkles
– Using a double boiler, melt the coarsely chopped bittersweet and semi-sweet chocolate until smooth
– Mix in 1 tsp of vegetable oil to make the chocolate shiny

– Pour the dark chocolate into the pan, smoothing it out with a spatula to ensure an even layer
– Freeze for 30 minutes, or until hard
– Melt the white chocolate in the double boiler
– While the  white chocolate is melting, put the candy canes in a blender or food processor and pulse pieces are small enough.  Separate out the larger pieces from any powder that was generated
– Once the white chocolate is melted, add 1 tsp of vegetable oil and whatever candy cane powder was leftover from the blender.  I used this to flavor the white chocolate rather than buying peppermint extract ($$!)
– Pour the white chocolate over the dark, smooth it out, and sprinkle the candy cane pieces
– Freeze for another 30 minutes
– Use a knife to break up the bark, or just slam some pieces against the pan to make smaller pieces (I actually broke a knife in this process, so I suggest the slamming method)

posted in Other Fun Treats
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4 Responses to “Peppermint Bark”

  1. #
    1
    Riana — December 23, 2012 @ 3:12 am

    I shall be making this very shortly. I got all the ingredients yesterday, so YAYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!

  2. #
    2
    Stephanie — January 14, 2013 @ 7:12 pm

    Love it! I would also add 1 tsp. peppermint oil or extract to the bittersweet/semi-sweet chocolate layer to really imbue the whole candy with the peppermint flavor.

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    3
    pamela — July 23, 2013 @ 10:32 am

    This has to be one of them most simple things to make yet looks so sweet. I am making these for my kids school mates for xmas this year. I have even went out on ebay and got myself some snowflake moulds to make them in. I am not using peperment cause the kids are all around 6-9 years of age and may not like the flavour so i am going to add m&ms christmas colour or try some fruit or bubble gum candy canes. These will look good.

    I need to make about 60 of them do you think i could make them a week ahead or even 2 weeks? seeing as though its chocolate and candy?

    • Erica — July 25th, 2013 @ 9:58 pm

      Yes, I think a week ahead would be fine. Good luck!

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