I’m not much of a baker or much of a cook and my only real food skills involve slapping together cheese platters and charcuterie.

SO! My one holiday baking concession is making Chocolate and Peppermint Bark. Of course, it’s a total cheat! So here’s what I do:

Ingredients:

• Candy Melts in two colors (I always do Dark Cocoa and Bright White)
• Peppermint candy canes
• SPRINKLES
• A gift container (I went with a plastic take-out container I picked up at Michaels–not available online)

Step 1: Put a bunch of candy canes in a plastic ziplock bag and smash them to bits with a meat tenderizer. My father-in-law likes the pieces to be small. So I smash like mad.

Once I’m done pulverizing the candy, I start in with the melting. I heat in 30-second increments until the melts get melty!

I pour the melted chocolate onto a cookie pan lined with either parchment or wax paper. 

I use a silicone spatula to spread it out toward the edges of the pan.

I tap the pan on the counter to level out the chocolate. Then I leave it to set. You’ll know the candy is set when it’s no longer shiny.

Once it’s dry, I turn to the white candy melts. These take a little bit longer to melt, in my experience. 

Once the white is melted, I pour it right onto the Dark Cocoa.

Using a spatula, I spread the white over the dark chocolate, leaving a little dark chocolate border. 

Next up: SPRINKLES. These are optional! But I like the texture and color they add. Immediately after I spread the white chocolate I tap the pan a couple of times and then add sprinkles. 

After the sprinkles, I take a big spoon and sprinkle the peppermint shards onto the still-wet white chocolate.

Voila! I also tap the pan a couple of times and use the back of the spoon to push down any pieces that look like they are not taking to the white chocolate. 

I let the white chocolate firm up a little and then use a pizza cutter to slice it into strips. Once it’s set, I put it in the containers. This year, I put the slices between wax paper and stacked them into a plastic holiday-themed take-out container. Because candy melts can go, well, melty, you need to have parchment or wax paper between the layers.

That’s it!