Break a piece and it cracks dry. No slow bend to it. The mint arrives first. Then the dark layer turns properly bitter for a second before the white catches up.
I used to spend whole December afternoons stirring chocolate fudge for the neighbours. But this Peppermint bark recipe takes forty minutes. My aunt Nadia taught me to smash the canes in a tea towel with a rolling pin. Eight whacks. Then sieve the red dust out through a 12 cm mesh.
Everything rides on how cool that first layer is when the second one lands on it.
My eldest took a third of the first tray before it had finished setting, straight off the parchment and still cold from the fridge, and he was not sorry about a single piece of it.
Why I Keep Making This
- Two layers, one tin: the white goes straight onto the dark. No moulds. No tempering machine.
- It keeps. Two weeks in a tin and it still snaps.
- £4.20 a tray: the boxed stuff was £11.50 for 200g last year, which is a bit much.
- Crushed by hand, never blitzed: shards the size of a lentil next to red dust, so the top looks like weather rather than sprinkles.
Making It
Melt The Dark Chocolate
Line a 9×13 inch (23×33 cm) tin with parchment. Leave an overhang.
Chop 12 oz of dark chocolate small. I chop a bar every time, because chips have no business in bark and they hold their shape exactly when you want them to slump.
Set a glass bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Low heat, always. Stir it slow until it’s smooth. Then pull the bowl at 113°F/45°C (I use a cheap probe thermometer, nothing clever).
Don’t walk off mid melt.
Dark chocolate carries on heating after the bowl leaves the pan, and I seized a whole bowl of it once, standing right there, reading my phone like an idiot.
Spread The Base
Tip it into the tin. Push it out to about 5 mm with an offset palette knife.
Into the fridge for 15 minutes. Maybe 16, my fridge is old.
Matte, not shiny. No mark when you press it lightly. That’s your 15 minute point. And the fridge beats the counter here, because the counter takes half the evening and I’m impatient.
Melt The White Chocolate
Same bowl, wiped bone dry. 12 oz of white chocolate, off the heat sooner, at 104°F/40°C. The spoon meets almost no drag in this one, and it goes loose well before you’re expecting it.
Stir in ½ tsp peppermint extract. Then stop stirring.
One drip off the pan lid, and it only ever takes the one, turned a whole bowl of white chocolate into wet sand on me back in 2019.
So if it goes grainy, it’s water.
Bin it.
Scatter The Canes
Pour the white over the chilled dark and spread fast. You’ve got maybe 40 seconds of easy spreading.
Scatter 1 cup of crushed candy canes over the top. Press them in with the flat of the palette knife. Half buried, no more.
Wait too long and they roll straight off.
And then you’re picking canes off the parchment while the tray sets without them.
Rest And Break It
Rest it at room temperature for 1 hour, or 30 minutes in the fridge if your kitchen runs warm like mine does with the heating on.
Lift the parchment out and break the slab by hand.
Shards, not squares.
I never use a knife. Listen for the crack. Short. Dry. Done in a second. A dull thud means back in the cold for another ten minutes.
What I Buy For This
Dark chocolate: Green & Black’s 70%, three 90g bars.
White chocolate: don’t use chips here. Mine sat in stubborn lumps and no amount of stirring shifted them, so the layer came out streaky and that batch got eaten standing up in the kitchen rather than given away to anybody.
Peppermint extract: extract, not oil (oil is roughly four times stronger and I’ve ruined a tray with it).
Candy canes: six standard ones gets you a cup. Aldi has a tub of them from about mid November, £1.79.
Flaky salt: optional. A pinch, pressed in with the canes.
Leftovers And How Long It Keeps
Making Ahead: make this Peppermint bark recipe up to 2 weeks before you need it. Honestly, day three tastes better than day one.
Freezing Instructions: 3 months, wrapped tight (two sheets of parchment, then foil). Thaw it in the fridge overnight and it won’t sweat on you.
Leftovers and Reheating: this one doesn’t get reheated. 2 weeks in a cool cupboard. 3 weeks in the fridge. But mine’s never once made it past the second weekend, so take that timing as theoretical.
The shards soften in a warm room and grey bloom comes up across the top.
Still fine to eat.
The Slow Cooker Peppermint bark recipe
Can you melt chocolate in a slow cooker? Yes. I use mine when I’m making four trays for school.
Slow cooker on low. Lid off the whole time. 12 oz of chocolate in a heatproof bowl set down inside it.
Stir at 20 minutes. Full melt takes 30 to 40 minutes, though mine hits it at 34.
Lid stays off.
One drop of condensation wrecks the lot.
Peppermint bark recipe that never splits
Course: Uncategorized24
servings20
minutes20
minutes168
kcalA two layer Peppermint bark recipe made in a 9×13 inch tin, dark chocolate underneath and minted white chocolate on top, finished with hand crushed candy canes. It breaks with a dry snap and the cut face shows two clean bands. About 1 hour 40 minutes start to finish, most of that chilling. This is the one I make for gifts, and it costs about a third of the boxed version.
Ingredients
12 oz (340g) dark chocolate, 60 to 70%, chopped
12 oz (340g) white chocolate, chopped
½ tsp peppermint extract
1 cup (about 6) candy canes, crushed
Pinch of flaky sea salt (optiona
Directions
- Line a 9×13 inch (23×33 cm) tin with parchment, leaving an overhang on two sides.
- Crush the candy canes in a tea towel with a rolling pin. Sieve out the finest dust and keep the shards.
- Melt the 12 oz of dark chocolate in a bowl set over barely simmering water on low heat, stirring until smooth. Pull it off at 113°F/45°C. This takes 6 to 8 minutes.
- Pour into the tin and spread to an even 5 mm with an offset palette knife.
- Chill 15 minutes, until matte and firm to a light press. No longer.
- Melt the 12 oz of white chocolate the same way, off the heat at 104°F/40°C. Stir in the ½ tsp peppermint extract.
- Pour over the set dark layer and spread quickly to the edges.
- Scatter the crushed candy canes over within 60 seconds and press them lightly so they sit half embedded. Add the flaky salt now if using.
- Rest at room temperature 1 hour, or 30 minutes in the fridge.
- Lift out by the parchment and break into irregular shards by hand. Store in an airtight ti
What I Put Next To It
- A small espresso, the bitter kind out of a stovetop pot, cuts through the sugar in the white layer. Try it. Once.
- Two mugs of mulled wine. Obvious. Still right.
- Cheeseboard. A hard aged cheddar and a few dried figs next to the shards, which sounds mad until you’ve done it at a table full of people.
- Six or seven gingerbread cookies on the same plate, if you’re gifting it.
My cousin insists the real thing has a thin milk chocolate layer between the two, because the American tin she buys has one. But I’ve made it that way twice and both times the shards came apart along the seam, and she still brings it up
Things People Ask
Why did my layers separate
Too cold underneath. Past about 20 minutes the dark goes hard and the white won’t grip it, so the slab shears along the join the moment you break it. 15 minutes. Then straight on with the second layer
Can I use chocolate chips
You can. But chips are built with stabilisers that keep them holding their shape under heat, so the melt comes out thick and a bit claggy.
Chop a bar.
Do I have to temper the chocolate
No. This Peppermint bark recipe skips it entirely (the fridge does that job) and the shards still give a dry snap under your thumb.
How far ahead can I make it
Two weeks in a cool cupboard. Three, if your cupboard’s genuinely cold. Actually, no. Two.
What else can I do with the offcuts
Chop the small bits and stir them through hot chocolate. Or fold them into a batch of no churn ice cream, which is the better use by a mile. It never survives past New Year.
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