Dark chocolate meets crunchy chocolate chip cookie crumbles meets WOW.
A holiday chocolate bark is becoming somewhat of a tradition around here. Well, if you don’t count the last two years which I embarrassingly skipped. Still, before that we had fruity chocolate bark, peanut butter cup chocolate bark, and mint chocolate swirl bark (and don’t make me choose a favorite because I refuse).
Chocolate bark makes a great handmade holiday gift, and, once you get the hang of tempering chocolate, is super easy to throw together. You could really top it with just about anything. Once your bark is set, break it up into bite-sized pieces, pack it into a cello gift bag and tie with a pretty ribbon and gift tag.
This bark was made for crunchy cookie lovers (you know who you are). If you prefer chewy cookies, use room temperature butter instead of melted butter (and cream with the sugar before adding the other ingredients). Identical proportions, vastly different results. The melted butter bakes into a crunchy cookie crumble, while the creamed butter version, with identical ingredients otherwise, stays softer and chewy after the same time in the oven. Go figure.
While I am a chewy cookie fan through and through, in this case I decided the crunchy kind was the winner. It’s the perfect textural complement to the snappy chocolate.
OR if you want to be really wild… don’t even bake the cookie crumble. It’s eggless afterall, so it’s perfectly safe to eat raw, and you’ll have yourself some wicked chocolate chip cookie dough bark. It’s not quite as portable as the baked version (you’ll want to keep it refrigerated), but how awesome does that sound?
I debated adding a swirl effect to this bark much like my other bark recipes, with milk chocolate providing a subtle contrast, but in the end, since I was focusing on getting my chocolate properly tempered, I decided that trying to bring two different kinds of chocolate to temper at the same time was pushing it.
I’m working on my chocolate tempering technique (I like to follow the process described here), and was pretty pleased with how this batch turned out. The hardest part for me is taking the time to do it right: you can’t stick your chocolate over high heat expect it to work, rather you have to take it slow and pay attention to the temperature as you go.
Previously I’ve faux-tempered chocolate by melted it super gently, so the temperature never exceeds the 90 degree mark. Technically doing this should preserve the original temper of the chocolate. You may find that method easier than David’s method described above, which melts the chocolate first then uses a piece of tempered seed chocolate to entice the rest of the chocolate to take on the proper crystalline structure.
However you do it, properly tempered chocolate bark is stable at room temperature; otherwise, just be sure it’s kept refrigerated and you’ll be totally fine.
Of course, if you really can’t fathom even attempting to temper chocolate, you can always substitute chocolate candy coating. I’ve always found chocolate candy coating to have an ‘off’ flavor, but they are getting better (the Ghiradelli variety is the best, I’ve found). The beauty of these products is they contain additives that allow the coating to melt and cool and retain its perfectly snappy structure, no tempering required.
Dark chocolate bark with salty, crunchy chocolate chip cookie crumbles. A perfect edible homemade holiday gift!
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