Food Adventures #35: Chocolate Peanut Bacon Bark

I finally made some holiday bark. Recently, it seemed like every year around Christmas I'd be trolling Buzzfeed or Huffington Post and I would run into tons of recipes for holiday bark.   Eye catching flavors ranging from straight up peppermint bark to more exotic caramels and beyond would leap off the screen at me, trying to entice me with their allure and sweet temptation.

Thus far, I've managed to resist.  It's pretty easy to do this time of year- after all.  There's meals to plan, pies to bake and all in all, it's hectic, crazy and everything in between.  But this year, I stumbled across a wonderful recipe that was just so simple, I couldn't say no to it:  Chocolate Peanut Bacon Bark.

Listen, if you say the words 'chocolate' and 'bacon' to me in the same sentence, I'm there.   I'm on board, ready to rock and bring it ON!  But, throw in peanuts like this recipe does and it's a match made in heaven.

Let's start with what I loved about this recipe:  the simplicity.  All it took was unsalted peanuts, semi-sweet chocolate chips and bacon.  THAT'S IT.   Melt the chocolate, add peanuts, bacon, smear on a cookie sheet and stick in a fridge (well in our case, the garage) overnight to set up.  What resulted with amazing.  The peanuts gave it a nice crunch, but the saltiness of the bacon tamped down the sweetness of the chocolate making it taste more like dark chocolate than semi-sweet chocolate.

I've never made holiday bark before (like I said) but given the ease and beauty of the product that resulted, consider me a convert.  Rest assured, I'll be back this time next year to make another variety of the stuff...