Cookies and cream bark, and peppermint bark. Christmas treat time

We love to make bark - it's so easy and fun, and there are so many variations and possibilities.  And it always taste so good!  We started, way back when, with classic peppermint bark, and wanted to make a fresh batch for this Christmas.  I did it with milk chocolate, because I had another idea for add-ins for the white chocolate...

We started by crushing the candy canes as best we could with a rolling pin.

And when we'd been in Australia back in October, I'd seen some Christmas coloured M&M's and just had to buy them.  I had felt they would come in handy for something around about December-time, and this seemed the perfect use for them.  

Add in some candy snowflakes, pop it in the fridge for a few hours and crush it up a bit, and Christmas 2014 peppermint bark was born!

Then it was time to try out that new idea I had - strawberry Oreo bark...  We had seen some Strawberry candy canes and bought them specifically for Mini-2, as she isn't keen on mint at all.  Once they were crushed, we added in some crushed mini Oreo's to the mix.

 I added some holly and Christmas tree sprinkles and popped this tray in the fridge too.

Cracked up and popped in a tin lined with baking paper and this new version of bark was ready for dessert too.  Merry Christmas one and all 

4th of July is red, white and blue fun!

We're not American.  Don't have any specific ties with America - though there is an Uncle living in Tacoma. WA and a good friend living in NYC, and another good friend who used to live here in Dundee but is now back in VA I think.  And I follow a few American bakers, like Bakerella, The Girl who ate Everything,  Created by Diane, Pint Sized Baker, Rose Bakes and so on .  And I am part of an American baking group on Facebook, so see a lot of American style cakes and 4th of July ideas in my Facebook newsfeed and in the emails I receive to my baking/work email address.

So actually, America does seem to feature quite heavily, hmmm.  Anyway, a lot of great red, white and blue ideas have come my way recently, some trickier than others, and I fancied trying my hand at some of them.  These looked fun and easy, and the girls wanted to help with some of it too.  They would have helped with all of it, but it was warm and sunny outside and they were desperate to try out the new Slip 'n Slide that we'd bought last weekend.  

Don't know what this is?  Oh, you're missing out!  My siblings and I had a yellow one when we were growing up and used it loads!  Mind you, we did grow up in Melbourne, Australia, where they know how to do Summer.  Months of daily temperatures from 25-40c and sun - glorious warm, yellow sun!  Ahh, takes me back, ha ha.   Anyway, it's a plastic rectangle mat that goes on the grass and it has a tube through the middle of the mat that is poked with holes.  You attach the garden hose to the mouth of this tube and water sprays over the mat, through the holes and kids run up to it then slide along it on their tummies.  Make sense?  Kids love them!!

So, getting back to the baking.  I decided to go for two things I'd seen on my newsfeed from Facebook...  A variation on this Red, White and Blue Cookie Bark and some patriotic Marshmallow treats.  What fun they were to do, and easy too!  And oh my gosh, I had a sneaky taste of the bark - it is amazing!!!  We decided that adding Oreo's would be too much, and what a tasty decision that was.  The salt and crunch of the pretzels goes really well with the sweetness of the white chocolate.

You lay out the pretzels underneath (and Oreo's, if you're going to use them), then add the melted white chocolate over the top.

Then you carefully, or otherwise, place your selection of red and blue M & M's over the top before the chocolate sets.  I didn't think we'd have enough chocolate M & M's so used the crispy ones too.  Mmm, great idea methinks.

 Here's the finished product, all ready for the fridge.

 And here it is ready to eat, cracked into pieces for ease of nibbling.  Mmmm...

For the marshmallow treats, we even had real American wax paper - oooh!

These were a bit fiddly to do, but easy enough.  Although by the time I got around to them, the girls had had their hair-washed and gone to bed.

So they'll be a lovely surprise for them, and our friends coming to play after lunch, for tomorrow! 

 And here's wee funny for you.  Sadly, it's not that funny for me, ha ha

We made peppermint bark, again

The girls saw the spare boxes of candy canes in the pasta cupboard (that sounds like a good hiding place, doesn't it?) and insisted that we make bark again.  Because they ate it all so quickly last time.  Not a problem I said, and we got to smashing up the candy canes.  They had a blast unwrapping and cracking the canes, then trying to crush them with the end of the wooden rolling pin.  We did an okay job...

Then I melted the chocolate in a bain-marie for the best result.  Well, I say bain-marie but really it was a ceramic bowl over a saucepan of boiling water.  Sounds a lot less fancy like that though, doesn't it?  Mini-2 stirred in the milk chocolate and candy canes

 And Mini-1 did the white chocolate portion.

And we all gobbled up the resulting bark in a matter of days, yummy!!!

A strangely busy afternoon - the sweet side

We've had a little run of ill health at Becca Towers for some reason.  I had a very sore stomach for no real reason all day Sunday so lay on the couch or took a nap or two during the day.  The rest of the Team were fine, so they went off ice-skating without me.  Then whilst there, Mr Becca fell over and twisted his ankle.  And had to take a day off work, and nearly made us visit A&E (Casualty) but felt it was more likely to be sprained than fractured.  Then last night the girls had trouble sleeping due to head colds, with Mini-1 also waking up crying with ear pain.  I kept them both off school today and got an early morning doctor's appointment for her, and she was duly prescribed banana-tasting (but horrible regardless) anti-biotics for the suspected infection.  Nice, not.  So a sofa, dressing gowns and dvd's day for them.

Preferring to a) keep out of their way so I didn't get ill and b) having housework to get on with, I spent some alone time in the Kitchen.  And instead of making mini cupcakes for their end-of-term class parties, I opted for chocolate dipped pretzels (again).  Though this time, I went for sticks rather than twirls, and a variation on the colouring so it looked less Italian.

The Jackson Pollock-esqe throwing about of melted candy melts was fun.  Do you think these ones look a bit more Christmas-sy??

I had more of the red and green chocolate leftover, so whipped up a quick batch of peppermint bark, in milk chocolate this time.  More Jackson Pollock type manoeuvres, then the girls loved eating the little bit of leftover vanilla-flavoured coloured chocolate at the end.

This time I not only included the crushed candy canes, but also some red sanding sugar and some red and green little cupcake sprinkles.

Peppermint bark isn't from a tree...

I'd never heard of peppermint bark before.  I spent my youth in Australia, and now live in the United Kingdom (Scotland specifically for the last decade and more) and it just isn't heard of.  So I honestly figured it wasn't food, but some sort of tree-related item.  Or something.  But not food.

But guess what??!!  It's food - and it's delicious.  And easy to make too.  I am friends with a couple who run a company (that felt good to say) and I saw their video on how to make it.  For those of you who don't want to watch the 4 minute clip, here's the blog post...

After some discussion with other members of the company's Facebook group, we decided that in the UK candy canes would suffice in place of the peppermint crisp that ShopBakersNook.com sell.  They were a bit tricky to crush without them flying all over the kitchen, but easy enough.  Then once mixed into the melted white chocolate and spread out onto baking paper, they looked like this.

I wasn't sure how long to leave it to set, but it was quite solid after about 20 minutes.  I had space, so popped it into the fridge for about the same time again, et voila!!

I think the girls are gonna love this when they get home from school - and Mini-2 doesn't even like mint.  Just need to try it with milk or dark chocolate next, mmm yummy!