It happens every year. People send out the cookie exchange invitations, and there’s always that person that gets invited, but decides to turn down the invitation because they don’t bake. They may not come right out and say “Sorry, I don’t bake, so I can’t come.” But they’ll find ways to get out of going, for sure.
If you’re that person, be warned. I’m stripping you of your excuses, because you can absolutely make this. If you can work a microwave, you can make this.
Start with these beautiful Nestle Toll House Holiday Morsels.
Then, get you/your sous chef/your mom/your child/your brother to sort them by color.
I recruited my amazing sous chef/mom to sort them while I did the second step.
Okay, this is the really hard part… take foil, line a 9×13 pan, and set a single layer of chocolate graham crackers on the bottom of the pan.
Melt your three colors of chocolate chips in three separate microwave safe containers, stirring every 30 seconds of the melting process to keep from overcooking them.
Spread the brown molten chocolate onto the graham crackers. Then, blob red and green melted morsels onto the layers, making sure to alternate colors.
Take a knife and gently swirl it back and forth across the pan.
Draw lines with the knife in the other direction, too.
If you want, you can even drag the lines diagonally.
Stick the whole pan into the fridge until the chocolate is hard. Lift the foil out of the pan, then break apart the bark in small chunks– random shapes are fine.
Ta-da! Take that to your cookie exchange and impress everyone without lifting a finger. If you want to get fancy, you can stir in a total of a teaspoon of extract into the chocolate– mint is a favorite, but orange adds a surprising twist.
See? Even if you don’t bake, you can absolutely make this bark and go to a cookie exchange. You win, and everyone else wins, too.
They look like Christmas. How neat.
That is amazing
Does the bark freeze well?
The bark shouldn’t be damaged by freezing, but honestly, chocolate often starts to “sweat” after being removed from the freezer, and for that reason, we prefer not to freeze it here, just because it tends to stick to itself and get a little more messy post-freeze. If you’re afraid a 9×13 of the bark is too much, this recipe can also be scaled down in size to fit in a 9×9 or 8×8 pan, just lining a single layer of the graham crackers on the bottom, then topping it with about 1/3 to 1/2 of the bag of chocolate instead of the full bag used in the full-sized recipe. This will help you have a little bit less, while avoiding a little bit of that post-freeze sweatiness that chocolate tends to get.
Long story short, yes it’s freezeable, but we don’t freeze it here. Use a smaller pan, and you’ll be set to go!