Dear All: I have decided to start updating this blog again. I’ve been less motivated due to being a busy grad student/having too much fun with the boyfriend/being a lazy ass. Guess which one is the most responsible? If I fall off track, and you care at all, feel free to send me a guilt-inducing comment/e-mail rachelmade@gmail.com to motivate me to no longer leave you hanging.
Even though my kitchen is ridiculously small – to the point where a cutting board does not even fit on the counter – and quite ill equipt, wonderful boyfriend and I, as budding evolutionary biologists have managed to adapt to our new surroundings. Believe it or not! I have been taking pictures of some of the awesome things we’ve been making. I just… you know… haven’t been taking the time to edit the photos or write the blog posts about them so that you, the reader, can benefit from our kitchen exploits. I was busy doing really important things like uh… watch more movies than anyone person ever should, attempt to eat my body weight in chocolate and occasionally, socialize or do productive work-related things. You know, typical graduate student activities.
Let’s get back to the topic at hand – the damn recipe and why it exists! An intro: here in the Netherlands they celebrate Sinterklaas as well as Christmas. The story is… kinda kooky. I won’t go in to any details here. I will instead refer you to one of the great modern essayists, David Sedaris and his story of Sinterklaas: Six to Eight Black Men. Regardless of the kookiness, the Christmas/Sinterklaas/whatever is always fun to celebrate and in light of this, my fellow graduate students and I decided to exchange gifts. We were all to bring in 3 gifts totaling about 10 euros altogether. Well, to me, I don’t think it’s possible to buy three nice things for that little money so I decided to make my gifts.
As an incredibly humble and wonderful person who is just perfect in every way, you know that it is hard for me to say this but… every gift came out hyper-awesome. They were all a blast to make as well. Unfortunately, as things go around the holidays, our gift exchange plans fell through. But worry not, faithful readers! The gifts I made were either given to a lovely someone or consumed by me and my wonderful boyfriend. Waste not, want not.
So I will start with the gift that was nearest and dearest to my cholesterol-clogged heart: some chocolate bark. I must say, this was by far the most fun and messiest gift to make which can be evidenced by the fact that I am still finding chocolate in random places throughout my apartment (including my ever-growing ass).
Nutty Chocolate Bark
Big bar of milk chocolate
Big bar of dark chocolate
Smaller bar of white chocolate (unless you really like white chocolate)
Assorted, unsalted nuts
This is unbelievably simple. It is so simple it’s actually hard for me to give you the procedure in more than 4 sentences, but I’ll try so that it makes it look like I actually did something impressive.
Line a baking pan with wax paper, this will be the mold for your bark. I recommended three types of chocolate, but you can use just one, or two, or more than three if you want. You can also tweak the amounts to suit your own liking. I’ll just walk you through how I did it this one time.
Melt the different kinds of chocolate in separate bowls. I did all of mine in the microwave by heating for 30 seconds and then stirring and repeating until it was pure liquid goodness.
Pour the melted milk chocolate and dark chocolate into the pan. The more crazy you get the more beautiful this will be. If you want to keep them each on one side because you’re a control freak, go ahead. If you want to be awesome and fun, you can throw them all over the place or mix them together with the tip of a knife. Save a little of the chocolate in the bowls for later.
Pour the bit of white chocolate over this dark/milk mix and stir it around with the tip of a knife. Take your nuts and press them in to the chocolate. I used some mixed nuts that I got from my yummy bulk food store but you could stick to just a few kinds. Press them in all over the place!
Then with the remaining little bits of chocolate you saved, dip a spoon in and then splatter it across your ‘canvas’ of chocolate. Go crazy! Try to channel Jackson Pollack as you go. In the end, it may look something like this…

Give me a moment to pick my jaw up off the floor…
Alright, let’s move on! Pop that bad boy in the fridge so it can dry faster. Once it is really dry – and I mean really really really dry not just about dry. It will be tempting to confuse the two, but do yourself a favor and don’t. If you’re having trouble waiting for it to dry, do what I did and clean up the tasty way:

It might terrify your boyfriend but whatever… you can remind him that you’re a mature and respectable person some other time and things will be A-okay.
Once it has really dried in such a way that it is actually dry, break that sucker up! Into uneven and mishappen pieces – it looks way better that way. Put in a nice box and give to someone you love or do what I ended up doing and eat them all with someone you love.
Remember that you can customize this as much as you want. I imagine adding dried fruits would be a delicious addition. Some chili powder or cinnamon mixed in with the melted chocolate during the melting process also sounds pretty delicious to me. Any other ideas?
Goodbye for now! I’ll be back soon but in the meantime, I need a shower.
