Chocolate Bark
Author: 
 
A recipe for Chocolate Bark that can be made quickly with minimal ingredients. Nuts, seeds, fruits, spices, herbs, and teas are all great toppings.
Ingredients
  • Dark, Bittersweet, Semisweet, or other good quality, non-dairy chocolate (I used 500g or a little over 1lb this time)
  • Whatever toppings you'd like (Nuts, seeds, fruits, spices, herbs, broken cookies, puffed grains, and/or teas)
Instructions
Not much of a "recipe," right? Here's the method to make excellent chocolate bark.
  1. Get all of your toppings ready and keep them handy.
  2. Place a heat-safe glass bowl over a gently simmering pot filled with about an inch of water. Chop the chocolate into small chunks and put it into the glass bowl. Heat the chocolate gently, stirring occasionally with a spatula. When you see that the chocolate is about ¾ of the way melted, remove the bowl from the heat. You want there to still be small, unmelted chunks of chocolate. If you remove it after all the chocolate has already melted, you may have broken the temper of the chocolate. (If this happens, you can fix it, see Notes below.)
  3. By now, you've been gently mixing the chocolate and all the residual heat left in the glass bowl should have melted the chocolate. You may notice that there are still small chunks of unmelted chocolate or that the consistency is not as runny as you'd expect--that's OK!
  4. Now pour the chocolate onto a parchment or silicone-lined baking sheet and, using a rubber spatula or offset spatula, spread the chocolate into an even layer--whatever thickness you desire.
  5. Now sprinkle your toppings onto the spreaded chocolate and gently jiggle the pan to cement the toppings in.
  6. Allow to cool at room temperature (or in the refrigerator if your kitchen is warm or you are in a hot climate) until the chocolate has solidified and set. Using your hands, break the chocolate bark into odd-shaped pieces and serve.
Notes
-If you over-melted your chocolate, you can possibly save the temper by adding in a bit more chopped chocolate. This new chocolate will reseed the crystalline structure in the melted chocolate and help recreate the temper. It's a good idea to always reserve a small amount of chopped chocolate for this purpose. Even if you didn't over-melt, you could always add this reserved chocolate into your melted chocolate without any adverse effects.

-I know others have had great success with chocolate tempering in the microwave, but I've never had luck with it. Even when I use short 5 second heatings, I still find that it overheats the chocolate and breaks the temper. I only use the double boiler method now.
Recipe by Lands & Flavors at https://www.landsandflavors.com/chocolate-bark/