hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with chocolate bar that's right
usually my bark is worse than my bite but not this time
and besides biting this bark for your own personal pleasure this beautiful and
easy to make confection would make a great edible holiday gift which is we've
discussed in the past is a great way to show people we care about them without
spending the money that proves it so with that let's go ahead and get started
and the first thing we need to figure out is exactly what we're gonna add to
our chocolate and for this version I'm going to be going with the following
three ingredients and those would be some pistachio nuts and these have been
shelled roasted and salted we're also gonna go with some of these beautiful
dried goji berries which if I'm not mistaken are the berry of the goatee
tree or shrub or plant I've never seen one but they're very delicious and very
festive looking and it'll last but not least I'm also going to go with some
toasted walnuts and then if we want we can also include one optional ingredient
and that would be a little sprinkling of extra coarse sea salt which i think is a
nice touch and then once we have all that stuff decided on we can move on to
the most important ingredient our chocolate and what I have here are 6 4
ounce bars of dark chocolate that is 70% cacao and you could go with a little
lower percentage of cacao but I am recommending something between 60 and
70% cacao and I mentioned that mostly because I really enjoy saying the word
cacao and what we need to do before we temper our chocolates is go ahead and
chop this into small pieces which is not that hard
the most difficult part is not having a file over as you cut and also try not to
eat too much as you do it but anyway we're gonna go ahead and chop up a pound
and a half a dark chocolate and then we're going to separate it into 1/3 and
2/3 portions because while making this I wanted to test out a shortcut method for
tempering the chocolate which involves us melting 2/3 of the chocolate and then
stirring the 1/3 portion into that ok the classic professional way is we melt
and heat the chocolate to a very specific temperature and then we cool it
down and heat it back up so instead of that I decided to try this sounds too
good to be true method to hopefully achieve the same results so I'm gonna go
ahead and add 2/3 of our chocolate to the
bowl and we're just gonna do this by eye and like I said we will reserve 1/3 of
the chocolate to add later and to melt the chocolate what we'll do is heat up a
couple inches water until it just barely starts to simmer and then we'll reduce
our heat to low and place a bowl over the top to create what we call in the
business a double boiler and by the way be sure your heats on the lowest
possible setting and then what we'll do is add our 2/3 portion into that and
basically stand there and watch it melt and we're not going to stir this until
we think approximately two-thirds of the chocolate is melted
all right give or take which for me looked to be about right here although
it's hard to see with all that glare and what we'll do when it reaches that point
is give it a stir with our silicone spatula and we'll keep it over low heat
stirring occasionally until all that chocolates melted and the mixture feels
hot to the touch okay not super hot like hot bathwater okay about a hundred
fifteen hundred twenty degrees is good so I tested that with my finger and it
was hot to the touch and once it does reach that point we'll go ahead and add
the one-third of the chocolate we reserved and we'll give that a quick
stir and then just as soon as that's been stirred in to finish this up what
we'll do is remove this from the heat set it down on the table and basically
let it cool down stirring occasionally until it's cool to the touch and by then
all your chocolate will have melted and you should have a very smooth very shiny
bowl of melted chocolate and by the way I should have already mentioned the
whole idea with temporary in the chocolate is so that once it firms back
up it keeps a nice firm snappy texture and not a soft waxy texture okay when we
break a piece of this it should snap like our original borrowed chocolate so
I kept stirring and testing with my finger until I thought it had cooled
down enough and I probably should let it gone farther until it started to thicken
up a little bit but I'm sort of impatient plus the Sun was going down so
I decided you mind was cool enough and proceeded to pour that onto my lined
baking sheet and I'm using a silicone mat here but parchment paper or plastic
wrap will work also but anyway I went ahead and poured my chocolate on like I
said probably a little too soon and then what we'll do while this stuff
is still wet is sprinkle over our toppings so I started with my walnuts
which as you can see I chopped up or I'm gonna leave my dried goji berries whole
but I did decide to chop up my walnuts and pistachios so how much or even if
you're gonna chop this stuff is up to you all right that's all gonna depend on
the texture and appearance of the surface you're going for so you decide
you are after all the Bob Marley of how narrowly to make your bark but as you
can see I did chop mine up pretty well and besides whether to chop or not you
also have to decide how much to put on alright some people go for almost
completely full coverage but personally I do like to see a good amount of
chocolate but I was still pretty generous and then once my fruit nuts
were applied I finished up with a light sprinkling of our sea salt and that is
it all we need to do is let this cool down and harden up which should happen
right on the table top but again I was worried about my light so I cheated and
pop mine in the fridge for a few minutes at which point I pulled it out and it
looked like this and I have to be honest I was a little concerned because it
wasn't that shiny so I really wasn't sure at this point if that shortcut
tempering method worked but as I started to break this up it actually felt pretty
good and was snapping apart in nice clean pieces although it does help that
this was cold but later even at room temp it did break up pretty cleanly and
if you hold it at the right angle the surface did have a little bit of Sheen
to it which is a good sign so I will deem the
shortcut tempering method acceptable but have you said that I'm also going to
provide links in the blog post to the actual professional temporary method in
case you want to use that because that'll produce a bark that comes out
even shinier and crisper but anyway I went ahead and finished breaking that up
some people like to cut it but I think the irregular broken pieces look much
better and way more bark like and that's it once that's portioned up we can
transfer that into some kind of attractive serving vessel and enjoy our
fruity nutty chocolate bark which obviously can be made with a million
different combinations of toppings but have you said that these three work very
well especially with that little touch of sea salt and as I mentioned the whole
point of that tempering step so you can snap the chocolate like this
okay it's not like it's gonna be terrible if it's soft but if you temper
the texture is going to be much nicer and more like a piece of nice chocolate
versus a piece of cheap chocolate so let me go ahead and try one more piece
before I move along and remind you what a great edible gift this would make
presented in some type of festive container preferably with a bow and that
my friends would make one very nice edible gift and remember what we say
when it comes to giving edible gifts we're not cheap we're creative but
anyway that's it a holiday themed chocolate bark like I said I wanted to
try that shortcut tempering method which did work out pretty good
but like I said in the blog post I will provide links to show you how to do for
real but either way professional method or shortcut whether you're making this
for yourself or for a gift or both I really do hope you give this a try soon
so head over to food wishes calm for all the ingredient amounts or more info as
usual and as always enjoy