World's simplest chocolate holiday bark recipe

Hello, readers! Are you looking for a cheap, super easy, homemade gift for the holidays? I have just the thing for chocolate lovers. Who doesn't like chocolate? ...Plenty of people, I'm sure, but plenty of people are also wrong. ;)

Let me preface this by saying I do NOT cook. I don't like to do it, and I'm not usually very good at it, but this recipe was something that even I could handle with ease. This is probably the easiest thing I've made from "scratch", supervised children could even make it by themselves. Maybe even well trained circus monkeys. This version takes about 10-15 minutes prep time max, plus 30 minutes in the freezer to chill.

There are other versions out there with a layer of white chocolate, which I originally tried, but that... didn't go as planned. That recipe was also easy, yet I still maned to screw it up, hahaha. Turns out I got the wrong kind of white chocolate chips and they didn't melt, just clumped together and burned. I think I picked up the wrong kind of white chocolate chips, Mum suggested they might have been the heat resistant kind to remain chip shaped in the oven while baking them into cookies. Oops!

Well, this more simplified version is almost impossible to mess up. It'd be a great holiday activity to make with the whole family to get the kids involved, and makes a great holiday gift for those on a limited budget.

If you DO want a layer of white chocolate, get 12oz of white chocolate (make sure it's a kind that melts!), melt it down, and pour it on top of the other chocolate that has cooled and hardened a little but is still tacky, then spread it out evenly, and sprinkle the peppermint bits on top of the liquid white chocolate.

FOODSTUFFS YOU WILL NEED

12oz of chocolate chips

I used dark chocolate, but I'm sure milk chocolate works just as well. ...Be careful when buying white chocolate chips, though, sometimes they are made not to melt...long story short I had a failure involving trying to melt white chips. :P

Candy canes or peppermints

How much you need depends on the amount of topping you want. I wouldn't worry too much about it, this is a very simple recipe to mess up (yet, somehow I still did the first time...shows my cooking skill), and there's wiggle room. I was going for a more powdery/small chunk topping, so I could get away with using less; I used maybe a little less than half of the box I bought per batch.

COOKWARE YOU WILL NEED

A cookie sheet

They recommend 9"x12" but my pan is 12"x18". It still worked but the bark was spread much thinner, not a big deal. :)

Wax paper

Microwave friendly bowl

Hammer/meat tenderizer/crab mallet/large rock to crush the candy canes

Rubber spatula to stir and scoop out the melted chocolate

Optional - gift tins

Optional - aluminum foil

Optional step...zero?: Get all your peppermints/candy canes out of their plastic wrappers (I didn't realize the ones I bought were individually packaged and it was a pain in the butt) and into your baggie so you can crush them up before you start with the chocolate.

It's fun, pop them into the baggie, seal it up, and whack the crap out of them with your bludgeoning tool of choice. Be sure the surface you're pulverizing them on won't be damaged by your hammering.

I didn't do this in the beginning, I did it after step three when the chocolate was cooling. In hindsight it probably would have been easier to have had them ready to sprinkle as soon as the liquid chocolate is ready for them (they'd also adhere better). In the end it doesn't make a huge difference, so you can do it now and later, but next time I'll do this first.

Step one: Entirely cover your cookie sheet in wax paper. I recommend leaving a little room over the sides to help prevent mess.

Step two: Pour your chocolate chips into your microwave safe bowl, and put it in the microwave. Because microwaves vary in power, I recommend putting it in for 30 seconds at a time, then removing it, stirring it, then putting it back in for another 30, and repeating until the chocolate is smooth. The bowl will be very hot, I should have know this but somehow my brain farted and...ouch.

When your chips are all fully melted and the liquid chocolate is smooth, like so, it's time to move onto step three.

Step three: Pour the melted chocolate onto your wax paper and spread it out evenly. Use the rubber spatula to scoop out as much chocolate from the bowl as you can.

Step four: If you didn't do it at the beginning during optional step zero, now is when you crush up your candy canes or peppermints. Once you have them crushed to your desired consistency, it's time to sprinkle them onto the chocolate!

It...it looks less like peppermint covered diarrhea in person, I swear...

Step five: Put it in the freezer for 30 minutes to harden, and you're done!

Since the bark will be given out as holiday gifts, I got a bunch of cute metal tins from the local Dollar Tree to put it in.

The packaging was easy. First hand wash and dry the tins. Then I added a layer of tinfoil for extra insulation, but you don't have to add it if you don't want to. Next I added wax paper, with enough overflow over the edges, so I could fold it over top of the bark and wrap it up. Then close the lid and they're ready to give away as gifts! :)