Pistachio Coffee Dark Chocolate Bark Recipe. You're Welcome! :-)

It's 3 days to Valentine's Day and mere hours 'til, what we in Portland call Snowmageddon, begins. Both are great reasons to enjoy some cozy, chocolatey yumminess. 

I don't have a huge sweet tooth, but I do love chocolate. The darker the better. Buying fancy chocolate bars can get kind of spendy, so I figured how hard could it be to make chocolate bark/bars with my own add-ins? Well, not hard at all. After poking around at some recipes I came up with dark-chocolate-pistachio-coffee-sea-salt-bark combo as my fav.

When I mention it or share it with friends they all want the recipe, so this post is long over due. 

Heads up: I pretty much like to play with my food. If I get an idea for something I wanna eat, I may poke around at recipes for general guidelines. I'm not a measure-every-ingredient-exactly person either. The basic idea here is A) let's melt some chocolate and B) put stuff in it. :-) If you wanna to change ratios of dark to semi-sweet chocolate, subtract the coffee, add almonds instead of pistachios, do a completely different combo like candied ginger and toasted coconut, go for it! 

So here we go! 

Ingredients
  • 1 4 oz 100% cacao baking chocolate bar (something like this)
  • 1 11.5 oz bag of chocolate chips ( I like Guittards)
  • 1/2-3/4 cup chopped pistachios (I honestly don't know how much I use exactly)
  • 1-3 tablespoons ground coffee (I do 3, but you may want less. It does add some grittiness to the bark, but I love it that way. Kind of like chocolate covered espresso beans. Crunchy, right?)
  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil (honestly I don't always do this step, so consider it optional)
  • sea salt 

Equipment
  • double boiler or two sauce pans of different sizes, which is what I do
  • baking sheet
  • wax or parchment paper or one of those fancy-pants flexy baking mats. Again, I've skipped this too but some sort of material that keeps the chocolate from sticking to your baking sheet will help in the creation.
  • a big-ass spoon or spatula, something to spread the chocolate

Let's make the bark!
  • Line your baking sheet with paper or mat.
  • Set up your double boiler. I just use a smaller sauce pan set in a larger pan which has some water in it. 
  • Chop up the baking bar a bit, then put it and the chips in the double boiler.
  • On medium heat, melt the chocolate, stirring frequently.
  • Chop up your pistachios (or other nuts of choice) a bit. We aren't looking for nut meal here, folks. Just chopped enough so it all sticks to the chocolate well.
  • Here's where the optional coconut oil step comes in. Melt the oil, if solid, then stir your coffee grounds into the oil, set aside.
  • Once the chocolate is melted, pour and spread out about 2/3 of the melted chocolate on your prepared sheet. How thin to spread it? That's your choice. When I do this step the chocolate does not cover the entire sheet, nor do I get it perfectly shaped. I'd say it's about 1/4" thick, give or take. It's gonna be broken into pieces in the end, so don't sweat it. The goal is to get through this quick enough that the chocolate is still melty so the nuts and coffee stick to it in the next step. . .
  • Sprinkle the chopped nuts and coffee grounds over the chocolate. I use the back of a spoon or spatula to spread all this yumminess around a bit more evenly.
  • Drizzle the remaining melted chocolate over the above. Again, I spread it around a bit, so it turns out more like a chocolate bar, plus it cuts down on a lot of the good stuff falling off the chocolate, and that would be sad. But if you're looking for something that resembles bark, don't spread it.
  • Lastly, sprinkle sparingly, flaked or ground sea salt on top. You could skip this, especially if you are using salted pistachios, but I like to add it. 
  • Put the tray in your freezer or fridge to chill. Once hardened break it up to the sizes you like. Store in a container or a bag of your choice. I leave it in the cabinet, because room temp chocolate is better than refrigerated, IMO. But you can put it in the fridge if you wanna. Who the hell knows how long it'll last? It will be eaten long before it ever goes bad. ha!
Enjoy and share with those you love, including yourself. :-) 

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