Peppermint Bark
After my experience with trying to find peppermint bark and the outrageous costs I decided to try to make my own peppermint bark.
I searched on the internet and found these recipes and others and decided to concoct my own recipe. They all pretty much seemed to call for 2 ingredients, white chocolate and crushed peppermints.
So on my next trip to the grocery store I purchased Plymouth Pantry Almond Bark and Starlight mints.
I had considered buying the morsals instead of the almond bark but when I think of this being made I always remember the huge chunk of almond bark my mom kept in one pantry. It was there for so long that it turned from a dark chocolate color to a light ashy grey color. It wasn’t till I got home that I noticed it was vanilla flavored instead of white chocolate. I can’t imagine it will make that big of a difference.
The other ingredient, the pepermints, I wanted to be really flavorful and pepperminty. Since my husband is very fond of mints I let him point me to the Starlights. They’re the individually wrapped round peppermints like you get after dinner at restraunts.
Now getting the 2 ingredients together is fun. The first thing I did was to beat the crap out of the mints. But first I had to unwrap those individually wrapped suckers. It took me a few minutes to realize that I didn’t need the scissors, they pop right out if you squeeze them. Into a ziplock bag they went and I folded that in a towel. Then I beat the little mint package with a meat tenderizer hammer for oh, 20 minutes. My arm actually was shaking at one point. Peppermint aromas were filling the air and while it was pleasant, it made me realize the ziplock bag was probably full of tiny peppermint induced puncture wounds.
It seems peppermints, at least this brand, get stickier and stickier as you beat them. I unwrapped the ziplock bag and the towel was coated with a thick, sticky peppermint dust. I salvaged what I could from the baggie and put it in a bowl. To my utter amazment there were several fully intact peppermints and most of the pieces were way to big to use.
So I took the pieces and parts of the remaining peppermints and sandwiched them between two paper plates. Within 2 minutes the plate method had them in tiny acceptable pieces and a light fine peppermint dust.
So moral of that peppermint fiasco is to sandwich the mints between paper plates and carefully beat them in a single layer. It takes half the time and makes half the mess. Next time I do this method I might just try candy canes instead.
Now comes the almond bark. It kind of annoyed me that it was vanilla and not white chocolate. Next time I’ll pay more attention. The advantage though of the almond bark is it’s easier to use and I think harder to abuse. The instructions on the package say to melt in directly in a pan on the stove on low heat and within 8 minutes it is ready. Well it took longer than 8 minutes but I didn’t burn it. Though I’m sure Martha Stewart would be having a cow that I didn’t use a double boiler.
It melted easily and was easy to spread onto the tinfoil lined cookie sheet. It’s spread pretty thin though. I think next time I need to use a smaller cookie sheet.
I used my hand to spread out the peppermint candy dust and pieces. I was very generous with it. My hand looked like some weird freak show candy hand when I was done though - that stuff sure is sticky!
As I typ it’s cooling. I guess I’ll use my hubby, son and mother as test subjects later. I’ll report back how the stuff actually tastes. Oh btw, the recipes really lie, this is not something you can do in 10 minutes. But it does seem like something that would be a fun tradtion to add to our Christmas list of to do’s for the family.