St. Patrick's Day: Chocolate Mint Bark

Everyone knows that no holiday celebration is complete without at least 3 different kinds of food. In order to round out our Irish Tacos and Car Bomb Cupcakes (and to add even more green to the day), we made some of the Christmas staple peppermint bark (only missed it by 3 months!). This added a nice, minty finish to our cooking adventure and provided us with some much needed down time since it's pretty much just melting chocolate and throwing it in the fridge.


Chocolate Mint Bark

Andes mints about to be accidentally melted!

Adapted from Family Fun
Servings: A crazy amount
Time: 20 minutes plus cooling

8 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped
4 oz white chocolate chips, chopped
1/2 tsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp peppermint extract
Andes mints, chopped
Green food coloring

Surely there must be a market for colored chocolates. I'll specialize in brown and be rich.

1. Melt the semisweet chocolate in a double boiler, stirring continuously until smooth.
2. Pour the melted chocolate onto a cookie sheet lined with wax paper and spread it to about 1/4 inch thick with a rubber spatula.
3. Add the oil to the white chocolate and melt in the same way. Stir in some peppermint extract and food coloring and spread to about half of the thickness of the semisweet chocolate. You can use a knife to create chocolate swirls.
4. Let refrigerate until firm at least 30 minutes. Also, you can put some chopped up Andes mints before it hardens so that they stick in.
5. Peel the bark off of the wax paper and snap into servings.

More Tim Burton-esque swirls a la the chocolate cream pie.

The greatest aspect of this treat by far is the awesome chocolate swirls that form. They're what makes this dessert stand out from the Andes mints it so closely resembles in taste (pretty much dead on but with more crunch).  While making these, I learned an important lesson about melting things as I originally put the crushed up Andes on the bottom and then coated them in warm chocolate to predictable results. Also, if I had to make a change, I think I would have added a little Bailey's Irish Cream to keep the St. Patrick's Day alcoholic theme at the forefront (you wouldn't want your guests to start sobering up).

Just add a hook and they double as St. Patrick's Day earrings.

And now for a chilling exposé on Nancy's messy cooking (note: this may contain images too disturbing for younger readers):

Scooping granulated sugar proved to be an issue.

Nancy learned an important lesson about using a sifter.

She threw random foodstuffs on the ground with blatant disregard for the hardwood floors.

You don't even want to know what she did with the oddly shaped eggs.

In conclusion, if you see this woman trying to enter your kitchen, run away as fast as you can. (Note: this was in no way a response to her showcasing my messiness in Nancy and the Creme Brulee French Toast.)