Our Best Bark Recipes for the Holidays (2024)

FAQs

What is Christmas bark made of? ›

This Christmas Bark recipe is the easiest treat you'll make this holiday season! Made with pretzels, candy canes and salty peanuts, this sweet and salty chocolate bark has just a handful of ingredients and is sure to delight the entire family! Perfect for cookie plates and dessert tables – a must make for Christmas!

Store your bark in a airtight container in your fridge. It will stay good for weeks.

Storage: Store Christmas bark in an airtight container at room temperature or in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

How To Store Peppermint Bark. Peppermint bark will keep for weeks if stored in an airtight container at room temperature. This makes it a great gift idea around the holidays—make a big batch at the beginning of December and grab what you need for easy gifts for teachers, neighbors, and friends.

It depends on your preference! If you really love mint, want your peppermint bark to have some heft, or plan to gift it to loved ones, Williams Sonoma is your best bet. If texture or price are the most important factors for you, Costco wins by a landslide.

Costco's Kirkland Signature Peppermint Bark

TikTok's Costco Aisles recently boasted about the candy being seen back at Costco, noting its signature “Belgian chocolate (dark and white chocolate) and all-natural peppermint.”

Dip a brush into polyurethane and spread it evenly over the surface of the wood and work it into the rough bark along the sides. Then, let the polyurethane dry for at least 24 hours. If you want extra protection, apply another layer of polyurethane after the first one dries.

Although bark mulch and wood chippings won't go bad in a short space of time, they will decompose over time as it is a natural product. If you want to store a bulk bag of bark mulch for an upcoming project, you need to make sure it's kept in a cool and dry place as this will help prevent mould and insects.

Bark is a cheap, abundant and lightweight medium. It is full of carbon rich cellulose and this is food for saprophytic soil fungi. In certain conditions, bark-based potting mixes these fungi can fill the mix with masses of white fungal threads, just like woodchip. The mix looks and smells mouldy.

Use quality chocolate.

For bark-making, use the best chocolate within your budget, either in bars or discs meant for melting and baking. Valrhona, Callebaut, Scharffen Berger, Guittard, and Ghirardelli are all good options.

How to make bark that doesn't melt? ›

To keep your chocolate bark from melting, a proper tempering process is necessary. Tempering is a process where the chocolate is brought to certain temperatures, which essentially optimizes the form of the cocoa butter fat crystals and keeps it stable.

Homemade chocolate bark will last in an airtight container for 2-3 weeks. I recommend storing it in the fridge to ensure that the chocolate doesn't melt! Storing for longer? Wrap the chocolate bark tightly in a couple layers of plastic wrap and keep it in the freezer for up to 6 months.

The name "bark" or "candy bark" doesn't exactly explain itself, does it? Barks like this peppermint bark are called that because of the way the chocolate candy breaks into craggy pieces that resemble the layers and borders of tree bark. Also, many barks are made with dark chocolates, so the color is similar, too.

Other: Shelf life is one (1) year unopened and six (6) months after opening.

Bark chippings are usually made from the bark or white wood of a spruce or pine tree, shredded and chopped up into small pieces; it is then graded into various qualities such as a British Standard Play Fall Material (BSEN1177) and standard garden bark.

Christmas Crack is a sweet and salty treat made with saltine crackers covered with toffee, baked, and then topped with semi-sweet chocolate. Sometimes called saltine cracker toffee, it is as easy to make as it is addicting, so watch out! I love to serve it with other Christmas cookies on a Dessert Charcuterie Board.

However, a tree's armor, called bark, is not made of heavy metal. Its outer layer, which we see, is composed of dead cells that become filled with a corklike substance and air. The inner bark, called Phloem, contains living cells and transports food from the leaves to other parts of the tree, including the roots.

Chemical composition

Bark tissues make up by weight between 10 and 20% of woody vascular plants and consists of various biopolymers, tannins, lignin, suberin and polysaccharides.