If you love sweet, salty, crunchy, and chewy, this Turtle Chocolate Bark is the treat for you! Chocolate bark is the perfect gift for the holidays; it’s easy to make, and people love a good chocolate treat. Not only that, it stacks up so pretty in those little treat bags with bows for a quick gift!
The flavors in this remind me of those delicious candy confections Turtles! Caramel, chocolate and pecan ( then I threw in some pretzels because SALT.)
Turtle Chocolate Bark
There are all kinds of different recipes that simply scream “Christmas” the moment you bite into them. Whether because they are flavored with Christmas-y spices like eggnog, or just because they have Christmas associations like cranberry sauce, they are all a fundamental part of Christmas.
After all, what good is Christmas if you can’t eat extremely rich, delicious things like my mint brownies topped with buttercream icing?
However, what a lot of Christmas recipes seem to utterly lack is any kind of satisfying crunch AND chew; why are there so few delicious, crispy, and crunchy Christmas recipes? If you find yourself desperately yearning for some kind of crispy crunch this Christmas, consider making some Turtle Chocolate Bark – it might give your jaw a workout, but it is stupidly good.
How to Make Turtle Chocolate Bark
Ingredients
- Bakers Chocolate
- crushed pretzels
- pecans
- caramels
- To start with, chop up your caramels into smaller pieces. Don’t completely mince it, but make it so that they can easily be mixed in with the rest of the ingredients. Definitely, don’t skip the caramels, as it gives the whole recipe a chewy texture that not usually found in regular chocolate bark.This also makes it an amazing way to use up leftover caramels, especially ones that overzealous family members left at your house for Thanksgiving.
- Melt your chocolate in the microwave in a nuke safe bowl (glass, ideally) for one minute. At this time, the chocolate should be melted but still lumpy, so stir until the chocolate is all melted, making sure it doesn’t burn. I wouldn’t microwave it much more, as, after a minute, there is enough heat to melt it completely when you stir it a while.
- Once the chocolate is smooth, add in the pecans, pretzels, and caramels and stir it all together. If you want “prettier” bark, reserve a little of the pretzels to sprinkle on the top.
- Once it’s all combined, spread it out onto a sheet covered in wax paper and, if you reserved some bits, sprinkle them on the top and press gently. This really just gives it that “food magazine” look, making it Instagram ready. You can easily just skip this if you want a more chocolate forward mouthfeel.
- After preparing it, keep it in the fridge for about 2-4 hours, or even overnight. You are trying to get it to be as hard as possible so that it can easily be cracked and broken up into multiple pieces.
How Do I Store My Turtle Chocolate Bark?
Though it might seem strange to keep pretzels and chocolate in your fridge, that is where it needs to stay to avoid ruining it. Remember, despite its toughness, it is still just a giant slab of chocolate. If you try to keep it on your kitchen counter, you will likely find that it can melt chocolate all over the place. Not only is this bad for holding it together but it can also make the pretzels damp, utterly ruining that beautiful crunch.
Smashing up Your Turtle Chocolate Bark
To serve your Turtle Chocolate Bark, layout a few shards of the bark, all smashed up on a decorative plate. To help smash it up, feel free to use a tenderizing hammer directly onto the bark, but some people even use something as dangerous as a screwdriver to “chip” at the bark and make it break into more precise pieces. You do you!
To avoid spilling chocolate and pretzel pieces all over the kitchen, you might want to put it into a plastic bag to help catch the shards.
If you want this super chewy add in some more caramels! Play with this recipe as you want, add more ingredients, add different ingredients, it’s so easy to make!
More Christmas Treats
- Five Minute Christmas Popcorn
- Coconut Christmas Haystacks
- Bailey’s Bars
- Cranberry Oatmeal Bars
Happy Baking!
Love,
Karlynn
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Turtle Chocolate Bark
Ingredients
- 2 ounces package Bakers Chocolate( 8 squares)
- 1/2 cup crushed pretzels
- 1/3 cup chopped, toasted pecans
- 6 caramels
Instructions
- Chop up your caramels.
- Melt your chocolate in the microwave in a nuke safe bowl for one minute. At this time, the chocolate should be melted but still lumpy, so stir until the chocolate is all melted. I wouldn’t microwave it much more, after a minute there is enough heat to melt it completely when you stir it a while.
- Once the chocolate is smooth, add in the pecans, pretzels and caramels. If you want prettier bark, reserve a little of the pretzels to sprinkle on the top.
- Once it’s all combined, spread it out onto a sheet covered in wax paper and if you reserved some bits, sprinkle them on the top and press gently. This really just gives it that “food magazine” look, otherwise chocolate bark in real life has everything covered in chocolate.
- Chill in the fridge until it’s hard, then break it into pieces. It stays better in the fridge, it IS chocolate after all. It gets a wee bit melty on your fingers at room temperature.
Joan McCauley says
Can you use milk chocolate in this recipe?
Kim says
Sounds wonderful. I made one last Christmas with chocolate, pretzel and toffee bits.
Oh, and if you don’t have the caramels on hand already, I noticed Kraft has caramel BITS now. Another reason I should try this one.
A Canadian Foodie says
“Tis the season – yum yum yum!
Kendyl says
I just made 144 of these babies for a work cookie exchange….definitely an easy recipe (thank God – I think I got carpal tunnel syndrome from all the chopping) 🙂
Karlynn says
Wow, spoiled co-workers! Yup, it’s easy but the chopping is a pain for sure.