I fear working with white chocolate the way others might fear working with yeast.

Chocolate?! I’ve never had a problem with chocolate. Every chocolate [fill in the blank] I’ve ever made has always turned out.

Lucky you

After losing more white chocolate to seizing than I care to admit, I almost completely stopped using it. And I’m not talking almond bark here… I’m talking pricey, that’s-what-I-get-for-spending-that-much-on-a-glorified-candy-bar white chocolate. It’s a depressing thought, really.

My favorite Christmas cookies use lots and lost of white chocolate so to prepare for the big baking marathon that is the week before Christmas, I ordered a 10lb bar of white chocolate. My brother works for a bakery supply company so I take every opportunity to seize on the “big sister” at-cost discount.

There would be no seizing on my sous chef’s watch. Not this time! I read everything I could find online about tempering chocolate and followed the instructions that came with the chocolate. I ended up with a very pretty chocolate bark – no cloudiness, no weird splotchies, no wasted white chocolate solidifying in the trash can while I drowned my sorrows in a bottle of Cab. Just darn good chocolate bark… that’s disappearing very quickly, one shard at a time.

Swirly White and Semisweet Peppermint Bark
What I used:
1.5 lbs white chocolate
1.5 lbs of semi-sweet chocolate
24 peppermint candies

What I did:
Unwrapped 24 Starlight peppermints and placed them in a 1-qt ziploc baggie. I handed the rolling pin to my sous chef and let him crush the candy ’cause he’s good at breaking stuff

My sous chef chopped (and chopped and chopped) each kind of chocolate into fairly uniform-sized pieces (1/4-1/2 inch pieces). A serrated knife worked better than anything else. We transferred one pile of chocolate to the double boiler – a simmering pot of water with a glass bowl suspended over top, candy thermometer clipped to the bowl.

I let the chocolate melt mostly on it’s own, giving it a nudge every once in a while with a rubber spatula. when about half of it melted, I started whisking until the temperature reached 91 degrees (per the instructions with the chocolate) and removed it from the heat, being SUPER careful to make sure no steam or water got into the chocolate. I whisked until completely smooth and then spooned it in random blobs on a wax paper-lined 11×17.

Since I only had one double-boiler set up but two chocolates, I set the oven to Bread Proof and popped the baking sheet into the oven – talk about convenient, the Bread Proof setting on my oven is 91 degrees.

Then we repeated for the white chocolate, spooning it onto the baking sheet to fill in the gaps between the semisweet chocolate. Using the end of a small frosting spatula, swirl the chocolate until you’re happy with the presentation and then scatter the peppermint pieces over the top. Let sit at room temperature until completely hardened. Break the bark into pieces and enjoy! Store at room temperature in a covered container.

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