Peppermint Bark: more of a guide than a recipe
Ok, so Peppermint Bark is basically white chocolate melted down, poured out in a flat square pan, with crushed bits of peppermint candies sprinkled on top before it hardens. Often you see layered bark, with regular (milk or dark) chocolate on the bottom, though the mints are always on top in the white chocolate layers. This stuff is like $24 a box at Williams Sonoma and it's pretty ridiculous if you ask me! You can make this at home and impress people/wtfever.
This 'recipe' is pretty off the cuff, but I recommend you start with:
1 bag (2 cups) white chocolate chips
1 bag (2 cups) chocolate chips, milk, semi sweet, or dark depending on preference
1/3 cup (at least) of crushed peppermint candies
a smaller pan than I used (9' x 9' would work), lined with foil.
I made a 3 layered bark, white/dark chocolate/white, fyi.
Put about an inch of water in a small pan and bring it almost to a boil on medium-low setting. You must not boil this water or let it touch the chocolate, at all. THAT WOULD BE TERRIBLE. Once the water is hot, reduce heat to low and put a heatproof bowl over it, one that is larger and won't let any steam in. Fill the bowl with 1 cup (or half your bag) of your white chocolate chips.
Add about 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil to the chips and begin to stir as they heat up. make sure to watch the heat, once the chips have started to melt I generally turn the stove off completely.
Once the chocolate is smooth, pour it into the foil lined pan.
Look how stupidly big I made it! don't do that, btw! It makes things more difficult. Anyway, shake dat pan! shake and tap the pan to make the chocolate coat it evenly, to ensure a clean, distinct layer. Now comes the boring part. Put the pan in the fridge for about 20 minutes, until the layer has set and hardened. This step is pretty important if you want things to work.
Anyway, after the chocolate has hardened, start repeating the steps with the milk (or dark) chocolate.
Use 1 cup or so of your chosen chocolate chips, and 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil. I over did it a bit, since this was the only layer of dark chocolate, I used about 1.5 cups. Melt throughly, like the white chips, watching the temperature. Now comes the harder part.
Take the pan out of the fridge and pour the chocolate over the white chocolate layer. Make sure to wipe the bottom of your melting bowl so no water gets on any of the chocolate (steam will have condensed there). Have I mentioned lately how important it is that no water or steam get in the chocolate? Oh I just did. Anyway, pour the chocolate, and attempt to tap/shake the layer flat.
If you are an idiot like me and used a pan that was too big, you may be forced to help this process along
(just tilt it around some more after you spread it to get more even coverage)
Anyway, put that shit in the fridge again. Wait another 20 minutes. Consider smashing candy canes in a heavy duty ziploc bag if you haven't yet.
IT IS TIME TO REPEAT THE FIRST STEPS.
1 cup or the rest of your white chocolate, 1 tablespoon of oil, heatproof bowl, not quite boiling water etc. Have I mentioned you could be adding pure peppermint or mint extract to the chocolate? It's not necessary but I did it on my base white chocolate layer and a bit on my top layer. Since pure mint extracts are mostly alcohol, they don't cause the chocolate to seize up like water would. I wouldn't use more than a 1/4 teaspoon.
Another layer! This one went more smoothly for me, probably cause I got the chocolate hotter. Tap, shake, tilt, etc. Now we finally get to the fun part.
BAMF! Peppermint that shit. Then WALK AWAY! Put that shit in the fridge, wait at least 30 minutes (I'd probably wait an hour just in case!) and you are done.
If you like having things easy.
for COMPLETION'S SAKE I'll show you how I finished my bark. I let the layer with the candy chunks cool. This is how most store bought bark is, with the bits just sitting on top, prone to falling off in the box or before you eat it. WELL WE CAN'T SETTLE FOR THAT CAN WE!??! I also had the misfortune of getting the wrong candy canes, so they were insanely hard to crush, yielding larger chunks as well as powdered remnants. I reserved the smallest bits, and melted another bowl of white chocolate and oil.
Mixing the candy with the chocolate itself is something other recipes suggest, often the ones that are only white chocolate, so you could actually do this for your final layer instead of sprinkling. I wasn't sure how nice that would look, afraid too much candy in the chocolate would make it harder to spread out, so I instead I only added the smallest crushed bits and the fine powder, and melted it all down, stirring often.
Obviously it will be chunkier than the other batches of chocolate, but try to make sure it's hot and viscous.
I carefully poured the pepperminty-white-chocolate over the hardened previous white chocolate layer, and tilted it around until it evened out. It worked out pretty well, thank goodness, and hopefully will help keep the candy in the bark. Then I put it in the fridge to harden.
After at least half an hour take the bark out by lifting the foil out of the pan. Peel away the foil. GIANT CANDY BAR :OOO
Break it into pieces (like peanut brittle) and package it up to give to people, or just eat it. I'd store this in an airtight container if I were you! Probably in the fridge! you may notice mine is sorta ugly but it's also way too big hahaha.