Halloween Chocolate Bark

If your children have been trick or treating, or you stocked up on goodies to hand out yourself, you might find you have an excess of chocolate and sweets left over come November. While it’s perfectly acceptable to still be eating it come January, with Christmas not that far off you might be looking for ways to use up this leftover chocolate and candy. 

Chocolate bark is a good option as it’s easy to make, and fun to do with kids, plus it makes fairly banal sweets or chocolates into something a bit more interesting.

Simply melt some chocolate, spread it over a piece of baking paper in a square cake tin or rectangular baking tray, sprinkle with sweets, chocolates (M&Ms and Smarties work well), popcorn, even broken biscuit pieces, and leave to set in the fridge. When set, break into slabs (you may need to carefully stab with a knife) and enjoy.

For mine I used a baking tray and 200g white chocolate and 100g milk chocolate. I melted both types of chocolate separately in the microwaved and coloured half the white chocolate purple and the other half orange. I swirled the three colours together in the tray and sprinkled over some M&S Hallow-Scream Munch Mix, £3.50 for 300g (I used about 100g). The mix contains mini pretzel pieces, chocolate covered pretzels, green and orange crispies (like little biscuit pieces in a candy coating), popcorn pieces covered in white chocolate and milk chocolate pretzel clusters - though I didn’t use the latter in my chocolate bark as the pieces were a lot larger than the others.

This could be enjoyed as part of a Halloween party or nibbled on while watching your favourite scary movie!

The recipe can be adapted easily for other times of the year such as Christmas, or Valentine’s Day as I did here (this is my other blog if you are interested in parenting posts)! 

Candy Cane Peppermint Bark

I bought this peppermint bark mould from Lakeland in the January sale and have had to wait until now to use it! I had a group of four schoolfriends, plus two husbands and two children, over for a pre-Christmas get-together and I thought it would be nice to give them edible gifts as going home presents, as it meant I got to try out some festive recipes!

This mould is really easy to use and it has instructions on the back. What I would point out though is that it says to melt 100g of chocolate - I think this must be for one piece of bark and the mould you can see allows you to make two at once, as I needed just under 200g of chocolate to fill both.

First melt some milk or plain chocolate, pour into the silicon moulds and leave to set in the fridge.

Meanwhile bash up some candy canes - I used two per piece of bark. When the dark chocolate has set, melt some white chocolate and spread over the top, and sprinkle over the crushed candy cane pieces. Return to the fridge to set.

It's easy to remove the chocolate from the moulds Here you can see both sides - the 'merry Christmas' wording is very clear on the chocolate side, and the candy cane side looks very pretty.

 

I packaged them up in some festive gift bags I got from Amazon and tied them with ribbon. I think they look quite cute!

 

I'm hosting Alphabakes this month (it's Ros from the More Than Occasional Baker's turn again next month) and the letter is X. We are allowing Christmas recipes so I'm including this peppermint bark.

 

 

 

I'm also sharing this peppermint bark with Treat Petite, hosted by Kat at the Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi, as they also have a Christmas theme this month.

 

 

Finally I'm sending these to Tea Time Treats; hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Jane at the Hedgecombers, it has a lovely theme this month of glitter, sprinkles and shiny stuff. The crushed candy canes sprinkled on top look quite glittery!