Peppermint Bark

Oh, yes! Peppermint Bark is in the house. This recipe is oh so easy and oh so delicious. As always, just have someone handy to do dishes for you.

Peppermint Bark in the dark

Today’s holiday excitement involved making this peppermint bark and firing up the pellet stove for the first time this winter (little known fact: yes, it does get very cold in the desert!). A roaring pellet-driven fire.  Hard to beat that for making it really feel like Christmas-time. Well, throw this in, too…

Baby Cupcake is all wrapped up for Christmas

A few notes: When recipes call for candy canes, my mom’s trick is to buy the mini candy canes (always name brand, people, because this isn’t a time to risk results!) because they are so much easier to unwrap! Unfortunately, I could only find the big ones, so I had to spend the majority of Baby Cupcake’s nap unwrapping the things, shaking my head in shame the whole time…still worth it. I was interested to see that in Paula Deen’s peppermint bark recipe (this isn’t it by the way), she said you could take a hammer to the candy canes to crush them. Wow! I prefer to use the food processor. It’s noisy; however, it creates a cloud of peppermint smoke that is both quite impressive and is a mini Christmas celebration in and of itself actually. The JoyOfBaking.com recipe explains that the peppermint bark should be stored in the refrigerator…so I’m doing that. Also, I don’t have a double broiler, so I always use the cheap-man version and place a smaller pot inside a larger pot (with water in the larger pot).

Crisscross two sheets of parchment paper in the pan for easy removal of the peppermint bark and easy cleanup

Peppermint Bark

2 cups 60% cacao Ghirardelli chocolate chips
2 cups Ghirardelli white chocolate chips
2 teaspoons vegetable oil, divided
12 candy canes, unwrapped and crushed (or pulverized in the food processor)

Prepare an 8×8 baking pan by crisscrossing 2 sheets of parchment paper along bottom and sides.

In the top of a double boiler, melt 60% cacao chocolate chips and 1 teaspoon vegetable oil; stir. Once smooth, pour into prepared pan and tilt pan to create an even layer. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

In the top of a double boiler, melt white chocolate chips and 1 teaspoon vegetable oil; stir. Once smooth, add 1/2 of crushed candy canes and stir. Pour onto top of chocolate layer and tilt to fully cover. Immediately add remaining crushed candy canes. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Cut or break into small pieces. Allow to sit at room temperature until it is easy to cut/break.

Store in the fridge, but allow to sit at room temperature for a while before eating (if you value your teeth).

Source: adapted from JoyOfBaking.com