Do you want to impress your friends and family at the next dinner party with a healthy, super fun and original idea?
Try my Homemade Chocolate Bark recipe! I just updated it and refined, it’s bulletproof 🙂
I love my recipe because you won’t need many ingredients, and you can literally change it to your personal taste adding to it!
It took me about 3 years of trial and error of this recipe, with different ingredients and method and now I can safely say I nailed it!
So, the main trick is to have a whisk 😉 I’ll explain the method later on!
Here’s the ingredients:
- 100 grams of raw cacao powder
- x2 85% dark chocolate block (I use Lindt)
- 150ml or 2/3 cup COMBINED cacao butter and coconut oil (around 75 gr cacao butter + 75 gr coconut oil, doesn’t matter if you have few grams more or less)
- 100 grams or 3 heaped tbsp of brown rice malt (for the vegan version) or honey. Honey makes it a little sweeter.
- pinch of salt (I use Celtic sea salt) definitely put it if you use honey!
- 9 drops of favourite essential oil (I recommend peppermint, orange, lemon but you can also use rosemary, rose, pomegranate whichever you want to experiment!)
These are the BASIC ingredients, from here you can add all sorts of topping of your bark.
Here are my favourite components of my bark:
– chilli flakes for a spicy version
– dried rosemary
– edible flowers
– toasted nuts (sunflower, pepitas)
– chopped almonds or hazelnuts
– goji berries
– finely chopped dates
– toasted buckwheat kernels, for the crunch!
– basil/mint leaves
– dried oranges
Here are the tools that you will need:
– a tall pot where you will place a metal or glass jar for the bain-marie
– glass or metal jug to meltdown ingredients
– spatula
– whisk
– measuring cups and spoons
– lots of teaspoons and table spoons to pour the ingredients
Is very important you follow the order of ingredients for a better tempering of the chocolate. Here is the step by step:
- To begin, place water in the pot and wait till it starts steaming. Then put the jug inside for the bain-marie, where you will melt and mix the ingredients.
- First, you want to add the FAT, so add the cacao butter and let it melt.
- Then add the coconut oil. you should have the combined quantity I noted before, not a problem of there’s little more of one than the other.
- Once they are all melted, add the SWEET, honey or brown rice malt and with a spatula or a spoon mix through the previous ingredients.
- Add the blocks of dark chocolate. then, mix until melted.
- Add the raw cacao stirring as you pour, will make it easier to meltdown.
Time to whisk it up!
- This is my trick, get the whisk and roll it between your palms as fast as you can. This will make all the ingredients melt so evenly without having the sugary deposit at the bottom (happened so many times!). Do this for a good couple of minute. Depending on the consistency you may need to do it a little more.
- Add a pinch of salt, it will reduce the sweetness and balance the flavours.
- Finally, add your favourite essential oil. I suggest to put 5 drops, taste then add the rest 4-5. Hint: don’t use spearmint, it will make it taste of toothpaste, I prefer peppermint. My fav so far is blood orange.
- Lay some baking paper on a tray, then add the topping for your bark on this and pour the chocolate mixture on top. you can also pour and then add the topping at the end. I tend to put the heavy ingredients like seeds and nuts on the bottom then pour, then add the light stuff like chilli flakes, herbs and leaves.
Finally, leave to set in the freezer for minimum 2 hours, then when you want to enjoy it take it out 10 minutes before serving.
I like to keep mine in the freezer for longer shelf life and I am not temped to have it all the time 😉
I hope you try the recipe and if you do PLEASE let me know!
You can find me on IG @SalusVera -> https://www.instagram.com/salusvera/, where I normally post about my recipes and nutrition inspo 🙂 Or you can comment here!
Thank you for visiting my little webbie, I hope you enjoy it 😉
Maddy X