Merry Christmas everyone, the Holidays wouldn’t be happy without some Peppermint & Chocolate. It’s something about the two flavors coming together and bringing total happiness to your senses. You could go to expensive Kitchen Stores or even Grocery Store and purchase some Peppermint Bark. Often Grocery Stores sell cheaply made Peppermint Bark using low quality chocolate and crushed Peppermint candies, profile is good but not great. Where high end Markets have great Peppermint Bark packaged beautifully, excellent profile for handsome price $$$$$.
So let’s make some Peppermint Bark that’s outstandingly great. You only need a few important ingredients, great dark and white chocolates, Peppermint Oil, Candy canes and Beta Crystal’s to ensure perfect tempered chocolate.
Be sure to use Peppermint Oil made for candy making, not Peppermint Extract.
Simply remove the cellophane wrapping from candy canes, and place the candies into a zip lock bag. Then close and beat it with the flat side of the meat tenderizer. Be sure to beat until you have small pieces of Peppermint Candy.
Next is to temper good quality dark chocolate I am using Albert Uster midline 74% couverture chocolate. I used 700 grams of dark chocolate and just melted about 96 to 98 degrees, then add 7 grams of Beta Crystals, stirring until reaching 90 degrees. Next melted 500 grams White Chocolate, keeping temperatures lower then 96 degrees and adding 5 grams of Beta Crystals and stirring to 90 degrees.
Pour tempered dark chocolate onto silicon mats. Then sprinkle crushed Peppermint Candy all over the dark chocolate.
Working very quickly so dark chocolate doesn’t set up, before getting the Peppermint candy pushed into the chocolate.
Fill zip lock bag with tempered white 
chocolate close and cut one small corner off bottom of bag. Drizzle white chocolate over top of Peppermint and Dark Chocolate in an attractive manner. Allow for chocolate just to firm up enough to remove from silicon mat. Place Peppermint Bark onto cutting board.
Work quickly so the chocolate doesn’t get set up too hard, cut into nice size pieces. And place onto sheet tray to completely firm up about 2 hours in a cool area.
After Peppermint Bark is totally set up, the Candies can be packaged.
I am using 5 by 5 inch cellophane candy wrappers and curling ribbons.
Place Peppermint Bark onto wrapper and twisting the wrapper until it holds.
Tie curling ribbon around twisted wrapper, then using a scissors to curl the ribbons.
I use multiple colors of ribbons festive for the holidays. This makes a very attractive packaging, also this makes it very easy for anyone to take chocolates without making a mess.
Merry Christmas,
Chef Dave
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