Chocolate Bark

Popping Sugar Chocolate Bark
recipes

Chocolate That Pops! Experience the Sizzle of POPSUGAR Bark

Who doesn't love Pop Rocks, the faddish candy of the 1980s?
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Who doesn't love Pop Rocks, the faddish candy of the 1980s? When Molecule-R sent us Popping Sugar ($4 for 2.8 ounces), I knew I had to sprinkle it over some sort of confection.

Popping Sugar is a neutral-tasting, carbonated sugar that reacts with liquid to release carbon dioxide bubbles, which causes all that snapping and sizzling inside your mouth. For my first experiment, I was inspired by Chuao to start with chocolate bark because it's relatively easy to make and an oh-so-fun way to experience the electrifying sugar juxtaposed with the melting chocolate.

The ingredients are simple: just chocolate and the Popping Sugar. Temper the chocolate; spread it on a nonstick mat, cover it in the Popping Sugar, and let the chocolate set before snapping it into the bite-size bark pieces.

Bring it to parties, and let the grin-inducing cracking begin. Keep reading for the recipe.

Use Leftover Melted Chocolate to Make Homemade Chocolate Bark
Tips

Simple Tip: Leftover Melted Chocolate Makes Easy Bark

Making your own candy for Halloween?
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Making your own candy for Halloween? Next time you dip anything in chocolate, be sure to make the most of the melted mess that's left behind. Rather than dumping it down the drain, do what I do: assemble homemade chocolate bark!

  1. Use a rubber spatula to transfer the tempered white, milk, or dark chocolate onto a baking pan covered with wax paper. With an offset spatula, spread the candy as evenly as possible into a thin sheet.
  2. Sprinkle it with anything you like: almonds, sunflower seeds, dried fruit, crushed candy, or all of the above. (My personal favorite is fleur de sel — to offset the sweetness.)
  3. Stick the entire pan in the freezer; within the half hour, the chocolate will have hardened into a luxuriously thin sheet of chocolate.
  4. At this point, you can break it into pieces, stick it in a ziplock bag, and refrigerate it to keep on hand anytime the craving strikes.

Serve it to houseguests for dessert, give it away as an edible gift, or hoard it all for yourself; the choice is yours. What do you do with melted chocolate?