Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Bark

Satisfy your sweet tooth with sweet and salty Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Bark with peanut butter cups. Make it as a gift or keep it all to yourself.

Do you find yourself adding more and more people to your holiday gift giving list every year? Coworkers, friends, neighbors, delivery drivers, your mailman, your landlord, teachers, janitors, coaches, etc.? Of course who has that kind of money? Not me, especially since I bought a car in October. I bet you have your own big expenses to deal with as well, but you also don’t want to look like a Grinch. I hear you. That’s why I always recommend making homemade food gifts. Not only are they more thoughtful than a scented candle, it’s much more enjoyable and won’t clutter your home with another thing you don’t need (seriously – I don’t ever burn candles. Or use lotion).

Usually when people ask me for recipe ideas, I direct them to cookie cutter fudge or gingerbread popcorn snack mix. But this year I have the recipe that trumps all recipes – Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Bark with peanut butter cups. It’s sweet. It’s salty. It’s nutty. It’s irresistible. If you’re weak in the knees for anything chocolate and peanut butter, imagine an entire tray of it at your fingertips. In fact, you’ll want to make a double batch because once you take a bite, you won’t want to give any away.

One technique you need to understand when making bark is tempering chocolate. Now before you run away from such a “scary” term, I’ll let you in on a little secret: if you’ve melted chocolate before, you’ve already been tempering. You just didn’t know it! Tempering chocolate means melting the chocolate to a certain temperature (below 88F) so when it hardens back into a solid, it remains smooth and glossy with a crisp snap you’d expect when you take a bite. If you want to learn more about the science behind tempering chocolate, America’s Test Kitchen produced a 4-minute informative video about it. I don’t think you need me to bore you with crystal formation when somebody else can explain it better.

Luckily you don’t necessarily need a candy thermometer for chocolate bark (although if you have one, it certainly wouldn’t hurt!). There are two key points to remember. One – don’t get any water or steam in your bowl as that will seize (clump) your chocolate. Two – patience. You can’t rush the melting process. Trust me – if you try to turn up the heat to melt your chocolate faster, you’ll end up redoing the entire batch.

For the peanut butter swirl on top I used melted peanut butter chips, which are more forgiving to melt. Some brands melt perfectly while other brands may require a teaspoon or two of fat to help smooth it out. If you find your melted peanut butter a little too thick, add some butter or shortening to help it out.