Peppermint Bark

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A simple layered holiday bark made with white and semi-sweet chocolates, flavored with peppermint, and garnished with crushed candy canes.

Nothing screams Christmas holiday season more than peppermint bark, don’t you agree? That iconic black and white contrast piece of candy speckled with bright red and white crushed candy cane bits– it’s like a holiday must have!

Williams Sonoma and Ghirardelli have the monopoly over the peppermint bark market, and do you know how much W-S charges per POUND of the stuff?

$29.95.

WHAT? WHY??

It costs me $10-12ish to make a pound. Plus… Love.

There’s always love in my baked goods. That’s why they taste so good!

So let’s skip the store-bought stuff this year and go for a homemade peppermint bark recipe. I promise it’s an easy recipe, and if you follow my exact instructions, you can have this classic holiday treat presented perfectly at your holiday party, on a cooke tray, or as a great gift for someone you love.

You will need 4 simple ingredients: semi-sweet chocolate, white chocolate, peppermint extract, and candy canes.

I advise you to follow this simple rule: absolutely no chips.

And this goes for both the semisweet chocolate and white chocolate portions of this layered peppermint bark, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Chocolate chips of any kind are made with stabilizers that prevent them from melting into the silky smooth texture you’ll need for this bark.

Stabilized chocolate is great for inside cookies, where you want the chips to keep their shape! Not so much when we’re looking for pourable, spreadable, smoooooth chocolate.

Ghirardelli, Baker’s, Lindt, or even Hershey’s are great choices for the semi-sweet chocolate portion of this peppermint bark recipe.

You can also use dark chocolate and turn this into dark chocolate peppermint bark. The amounts and instructions are the same. Again, do not use dark chocolate chips. Use good quality chocolate and get a bar of it.

When it comes to making a layered dessert like chocolate peppermint bark, it’s crucial that your layers stay separate but that they also bond together.

Traditional white chocolate is made with cocoa butter but replacements such as white melting wafers or white candy melts use palm kernel oil instead.

This is where the label checking comes in and is crucial for your peppermint bark bonding!

Palm kernel oil will inhibit your white layer bonding to your dark layer, and I know this to be true because I learned it the hard way.

After batches and batches of the best peppermint bark on the block, I had a flop and could not figure out what I did wrong.

I did some research and it turned out that the white melting wafers I had leftover because I so love using them for other purposes (chocolate covered pretzels, witch finger pretzels, Christmas Oreos, reindeer cookies) were causing my white chocolate layer and semi-sweet chocolate layer to separate.

Don’t worry– that peppermint chocolate bark didn’t go to waste– you just had to eat it like a sandwich!

But please, pay attention to the white “chocolate” you have: it should be made with cocoa butter. White baking chocolate, which comes in bar form, is the best option for this.

There are true white chocolate melting wafers that exist (seen here in my setup) but you’ll typically find those at a specialty candy store. Again, do not use white chocolate chips. Use real white chocolate only.

Peppermint extract goes directly into the melted semi-sweet chocolate as just a little extra mint “oomph” to complement those crunchy candy canes.

I promise it will not make your chocolate taste like toothpaste. Just a splash of peppermint extract in the entire 8 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate.

I aim for a lot of little pieces and some larger pieces, keeping in mind the larger pieces of peppermint candy will not stick as easily to the white chocolate top layer because you’ll cover a lot of surface area with the smaller pieces.

If you want mostly bigger pieces, you can always sift them out, sprinkle them on first, and then fill in gaps with the smaller pieces.

You’ll want to spread it around evenly with a spatula to insure it gets into the corners and lays an even, flat platform upon which you will build your homemade peppermint bark.

Rap the pan on the counter a few times to get the layer nice and even and also encourage any air bubbles to get on out of there.

Pop this layer in the fridge for about 20 minutes so it can harden completely.

Next, layer on the white chocolate.

Again, rap the pan on the counter to remove any air bubbles and to help those candy cane pieces settle.

I’m telling you, it’s dangerously easy to make this holiday staple, and if you read closely, I’ll give you some extra tips in the recipe to help make this go as smoothy as possible.

I like to change it up and do both, but when I choose to to cut my easy peppermint bark into squares, I let the entire pan sit on the counter for about 10 minutes after taking it out of the fridge to soften up a bit.

If you try to cut into very cold chocolate, you’ll likely end up with jagged edges and possibly flying bits of chocolate and candy cane bits strewn about your kitchen.

Then again, breaking it apart can also yield some similar fun adventures, so even if I want jaggy pieces, I still typically slice it with a knife so I’m sure I can get those smooth, beautiful edges.

This recipe for peppermint bark is one of my favorite to include in my Christmas cookie tins, because it’s easy to whip up right before packing things up, it’s festive, and it lasts quite some time– long after the cookies are gone (if it lasts that long).

Sweet, smoothy, chocolatey, and oh-so-pepperminty. Christmas time is here, y’all. So let’s peppermint bark it up.