Chocolate covered everything

Valentine's Day is fast approaching and if you are still stumped on what to do for whoever it is that you want to do something for just cover something in chocolate and tada! All done.

What you may need:

• Strawberries, Graham crackers, marshmallows, heart shaped strawberry favored peeps, or her/his favorite cookies
• Chocolate
• and possibly sprinkles

How simple is that?

First you need to melt the chocolate. You can do this one of three ways:

1. Microwave, place chocolate in bowl and microwave for about 20 -30 second increments stirring in between. Watch the chocolate carefully and do not burn b/c thats no way to show someone you like/love them. Unless you are being mean and want them to eat burnt chocolate. If meanness is the case, exit this web page, turn off the computer and go get a hobby. Anyway, I usually only microwave when I have a small batch of chocolate to melt, it takes to long to get it all melted for me. 

2. Double boiler. Place a pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil, place a bowl or another pan over the water but make sure it is not touching the water and turn down the heat to low. Add chocolate and stir as it begins to melt. I don't really like this method because I find it hard to keep the temperature consistent and my chocolate always separates or starts to gets hard fast (insert inappropriate "that's what she said" joke here). 

3. A crock pot. Just plug in the crock pot, and add the chocolate and stir as it begins to melt. I have a mini crock pot that I bought just for melting chocolate.  It keeps an even temp and it super easy. I love it.

Line a cookie sheet with wax or parchment. I had to use aluminum foil because it was all I had, so use that if you want instead.  Melt your chocolate. Grab what ever it is that you are going to be dipping and dip it. Very gently shake to remove excess chocolate and lay on the cookie sheet to cool and harden. 

If you want to add sprinkles do so now while the chocolate is still wet. If you want to add some fancy white chocolate squiggles (is that the right term? squiggles?) just melt some white chocolate, dip a fork in it and wildly fling it over what ever you want. Preferably the food you just dipped and not children, animals or walls. 

Once they are harden you can arrange thing in a pretty bowl like the one below. Or you could get some mini cupcake liners and arrange then beautifully on a plate and you date/lover/friend/whatever will be swoon and be mighty impressed.

See how pretty in the bowl? Please also note the blue arrow in the in upper left corner and the sleeping dog. This has nothing to do with anything but I thought you should see. 

Chocolate Peppermint Bark Cookies

I mentioned in the peppermint bark post that I would be using it in some cookies. I didn't have a recipe for the cookies I wanted to make but I knew what I wanted, a chocolate chocolate chip cookie using peppermint bark instead of chocolate chips. 

While I am all for playing with recipes and tweaking them to see what you get and how great you can make them, I don't do well with baking failures. So Instead of playing with a recipe I scoured the internet looking for a good chocolate cookie that I could use but nothing looked good enough. Then I came across 101cookbooks and they have a fabulous recipe for Chocolate Peppermint Bark Cookies. 

Yields approx.: 48 cookies

Ingredients:

3 cups Flour

1 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp Salt

1 cup  Butter, softened

2 cups sugar

3 Eggs

1 tbs Vanilla

2 cups peppermint bark, roughly chopped  

Optional crushed candy canes

Mix the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. 

In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, be sure to scrap down the sides of the bowl a few times. Then stir in the vanilla.  Add the dry ingredients in increments, stirring between each addition.  Stir in the peppermint bark by hand until it is evenly incorporated. 


Reserve a bit of the bark to sprinkle on top of the cookies before you pop them into the oven. And if you want, crush up a few candy canes to sprinkle on top for some extra color once you take the cookies out of the oven.

Using a sorbet scoop or a table spoon, scoop onto baking sheets 1 inches apart and bake @ 375º for about 10 - 14 minutes. The recipe says that the cookies will flatten out but mine didn't so what I did was dust the bottom of a glass with some cocoa powder and press the cookies down.  Cool the cookies on the cookie sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack. While they are still a little hot, sprinkle with the optional crushed candy canes. 

Kay 

Peppermint Bark!

Tis the Season for lots of candy, chocolate and baked goods. I am making peppermint bark cookies later so I decided to make my own peppermint bark. (Just an FYI, I just got a new camera after an unfortunate accident with the washing machine and I went a little crazy taking pictures of the peppermint bark.)


Also I used Almond bark for the bottom layer so that it would set nice and hard. You don't have to do this, you can temper your bottom layer of chocolate or just keep the final product in the fridge so it won't get too soft. 


Ingredients:


5 Candy Canes (I used 3 red and white and 2 red, green and white just for some extra color)
16 oz Almond Bark or baking chocolate
16 oz White chocolate chips


You will also need:
A double boiler and a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. 

Begin by crushing up the candy canes, I took 2 of the red and white candy canes and crushed them up to a really fine powder. 


Then I crushed 2 of the candy canes with green in them and 1 red and white candy cane into large chunks.


Then using a double broiler melt the chocolate. Be sure to not let the water touch the bottom of the bowl, do not let the water boil - we want a simmer and to stir the chocolate! 


Once it's all melted, throw in candy candy cane powder. Stir it around then pour on to the cookie sheet and spread out in an even layer. Pop it into the freezer for 20 minutes to let it set.

Once the chocolate is set, begin melting the white chocolate. When it begins to melt, stir constantly and for the love of all that is chocolate, avoid burning. 

Then pull the chocolate out of the freezer and carefully pour the white chocolate over it and smooth it out. I was impatient and melted my white chocolate too soon so when I was ready to pour it, the chocolate hadn't set yet so they marbled a little. But it's ok! It just makes it even more pretty. 

After you have an evil even layer of white chocolate over the chocolate, sprinkle the crushed, colorful candy canes. Place in freezer for about 30 minutes then move to fridge until set.

Once it is completely set, break it apart and store in an air tight container.

P.S. I used a smaller cookie sheet, which resulted in thicker hunks of peppermint bark but thats ok too because I'm cutting it up for chunks in a cookie. 

Check out the awesome pictures. Told you I went crazy with my camera. 

Kay