This recipe follows on (kind of) from last weeks Candy Cane recipe, as this is where a lot of my candy canes ended up, however you don't need have made the candy canes to make the peppermint bark - any style of boiled mint can be used.
Peppermint bark is essentially three layers of melted chocolate with crushed mints on the top - a super simple recipe that tastes AMAZING, of all the sweets I made my fam for Christmas Peppermint Bark was certainly the fav.
Ingredients:
-200g White Chocolate
-100g Milk or Dark Chocolate
-Boiled Peppermints (The amount can vary depending upon your pepperminty desires)
-Peppermint Flavouring
*You can alter the kinds of chocolate used to match your preferences, as well as the quantities if you wanted to make a larger(or smaller) batch.
First, line a dish with parchment paper, ready to pour in the first layer of chocolate. Begin by melting 100g of the white choc, when fully melted pour into the dish, ensure it creates an evenly spread layer spanning the dish. Being ever impatient I didn't wait for the white choc to fully set before adding my next layer, I think this worked well though, it allowed the flavours to merge more and created some pretty effects with the chocolate.
Onto the next layer, melt the milk chocolate, but this time before pouring into the dish add a few drops of peppermint flavouring, stir in briefly, ensuring the chocolate doesn't become lumpy, then pour over the white chocolate. Make sure again that it spans the dish in a nice even layer, covering the white, not to worry if it's not covered completely has the third layer still needs to be added.
Repeat step one, melting the second white bar and pour over. Yay, now you have your lovely chocolatey base, I loved the amount of melting chocolate involved in this recipe has it meant I got to lick the bowl so many times - love love love melted choc.
You'll now want to crush your peppermints, or perhaps have them prepared beforehand. I used the end of a wooden spoon to crush mine, although I'm sure a rolling pin would be just as effective. When crushed sprinkle the peppermints over the choc, no need to wait for the choc to set as you'll want to peppermints to sink in. Push the peppermints into the chocolate gently to ensure there in place and won't fall out when the chocolates set.
Leave the bark to set now, in a few hours you'll have a gorgeous slap of minty-ness, when fully set break into pieces, and there you have it peppermint bark!
Now I know what your thinking, Candy Canes in January surely not, and you would be correct - this is a very much delayed recipe post from one of my Christmas creations.
With my recently discovered passion for baking sweets, I decided what better presents to give my lovely jubbley fam for Christmas than some home made goodness. So I set about writing a list of sweets to bake them, and the one flashing at me, surrounded by ding-ding-ding bulbs, screaming Christmas was of cause the candy cane.
I thought to myself when starting out with this recipe, sure, candy canes, can't be that hard, right? wrong. It wasn't so much the boiling process involved, it was the process afterwards, twisting together two pieces of super hot minted sugar and bending into a candy cane turned out to much more tricky than I'd imagined. I'll try to talk through that aspect of the process in more detail so you'll be more aware if you attempt to make them. Although I have to confess in the end (due to a lack in varieties of food colouring) I turned my canes into mint sweets, and the remainder I used in next weeks recipe: Pepper Mint Bark.
Ingredients:
- 400g granulated sugar
- 120ml golden syrup
- 120ml water
-1/4 teaspoon cream of tarter
-peppermint essence
Combine the sugar, water, golden syrup and heat in a heavy based pan until they are all dissolved! Bring the mixture to the boil and add the cream of tarter, you'll then want to boil the mixture rapidly until it reaches the hard crack stage.
You'll now want to half your mixture, pouring it in half, into two greased dishes, add a few drops of peppermint essence to each and food colouring. You can add any colour you wish, I used red and left the other without has I only had one colour, but I'd recommend using two. (Sadly I couldn't find anywhere that sold white food colouring, so my canes weren't very traditional)
Here comes the tricky bits. With your food colouring and flavouring added you need to sort of kneed the gloops of sugar, I used a metal spatular for help, has the sugar was super hot it was so so tricky. Now pull a piece off of each gloop and try to create long rope like lengths of each, with your two lengths ready, try to twist them together - wrapping them around each other. When the twisting is complete mould into the shape of a candy cane. You will notice that the mixture starts to harden the longer it is left, in order to loosen it and make it more mouldable you can place it in the oven, not too hot though it'll go back to a liquid form.
I hope this made some form of sense. Perhaps rubber gloves might help with avoiding burning your hands when handling the sugar?
