My Morning Chocolate

Three Chocolate Bark with Spiced Nuts and Dried Cherries

Candy was a big part of my youth, and a feature in two of my favorite books. The first was actually a series, The Baby-sitters Club.  I was a big fan of the character, Claudia, a sugar fiend who hid candy bars around her bedroom.  

The other was a book from the 1981 Time Life Series, The Good Cook, called Candy. Here’s a picture of the scrumptious cover:

I spent way too much time obsessively flipping through the first half of this book, which is filled with pictures of the candy-making process:  soft chocolate paste piped into a foil cup, white fondant balls dipped in shiny pink icing, long coils of red and white taffy stretched into long strands.  At the time, these lovely photos must have been enough for me because I never actually made any candy.  

Then last week, I found this book at my parents’ house, and immediately got excited about all the candies I could make. Peanut butter cups!  Nougat!  Triple Layer Chocolate Sandwiches!

But as I read through some of the recipes, I realized many require the ultimate in temperature precision, i.e. a thermometer.  I don’t have one, so making these complicated candies will have to wait.  (Stay tuned though.  I’m determined to make nougat soon.)

Instead, I made chocolate bark.

The Field Guide to Candy says that chocolate bark was invented by chocolatiers who made truffles and other confections, then had leftover tempered chocolate to use.  

It’s also said to be the simplest candy bar to make.  First, melt the chocolate in a double broiler, or temper it.  (Tempering the chocolate requires adding unmelted chocolate to melted chocolate to form seed crystals, which make the chocolate harden into a stable slab and snap when broken.  When tempering, the chocolate should be kept at a precise temperature until used.)  Then, top with nuts, dried fruit, crystallized ginger, peppermint candies, M&Ms, or anything else that moves you.  After the mixture cools, break it into pieces to serve.

For the simplest candy bar, I still managed to get a few steps wrong along the way.  I had really wanted to make nougat, so my mind wasn’t in the game.  But it’s hard to go wrong with melted chocolate – I still ate way more of the rich, creamy bark than I should have.

Three Chocolate Bark with Spiced Nuts and Dried Cherries
Recipe from Emeril Lagasse

I chose this recipe because it’s made with white, milk, and semisweet chocolate.  It’s also topped with spiced nuts cooked with brown sugar, cayenne, salt, and cinnamon, which makes it a sweet/salty combo bark.  (If you’re curious, I’ve written notes about substitutions, as well as my little slip-ups, in italics.)

7 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 cups pecan pieces (I used almonds)
Salt
Cayenne
Pinch of nutmeg
Pinch of cinnamon
1 pound semisweet chocolate, cut into pieces  (I used chocolate chips for all three types of chocolate.)
1 pound milk chocolate, cut into pieces
1 pound white chocolate, cut into pieces
2 cups dried cherries, rehydrated and chopped

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. In a large saute pan, melt 4 tablespoons of butter.

Add the brown sugar and stir until the sugar dissolves and is bubbly. Add the pecans. (or almonds…)

Season the pecans with salt, cayenne, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the sugar starts to caramelize and coat the pecans evenly. Cook for about 4 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and spread the pecans over a parchment lined baking sheet. Place the pan in the oven and roast the pecans for about 6 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and cool completely. Break the pecans into small pieces.

When I made the nuts, the sugar and butter didn’t caramelize and stick to them. So I ended up with roasted nuts and pieces of cooked, spiced sugar. But I chopped up the entire mixture, and used it in the bark anyway:  

See the pieces of buttered brown sugar? They should be sticking to the nuts. But I used the whole mixture anyway.

Fill three small saucepans halfway up the pan with water. Place the pans over medium heat and bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. In three separate mixing bowls, add each type of chips into the individual bowls. Place the bowls over the saucepans. After about 2 minutes over the heat the chocolate will start to melt. Stir each chocolate until totally melted. Remove the chocolate from heat and stir 1 tablespoon of butter into each bowl of chocolate.

I went wrong here too.  But it’s because I thought the recipe was so easy that I didn’t need to read it closey.  (I learned my lesson!)  I added the butter to the chocolate in the saucepan and melted them together. This worked fine with the semisweet chocolate, but I had a hard time melting the white and milk chocolates.  This looks appetizing, doesn’t it?:

So I added a bit of boiling water to help it along. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this, but wanted to say that I’ve been there in case you too go astray with this step.  Now this is a bowl of chocolate I’d want to eat:

Pour each type of chocolate over the marble or a large parchment lined baking sheet:

The first layer: pouring melted semisweet chocolate

The second layer: pouring melted white chocolate

Sprinkle the pecans and cherries over the chocolates:

Using a metal spatula, spread the mixture out evenly back and forth to about 1/4-inch thick. Either place the marble in the refrigerator or allow to sit out until set, about a couple of hours:

The cooled sheet of chocolate bark

Break the bark into medium pieces and serve.