Dark Chocolate Macadamia Bark Sprinkled with Sea Salt
‘Tis the season of candy and sugary baked goods showing up everywhere you go. Plates of cookies, tins of caramel corn, strings of candy canes and leaden logs of fruitcake – why these things symbolize good cheer is hard to figure out. There’s no reason to be a complete Scrooge about holiday desserts, though, just as there’s no reason to deprive yourself entirely if you’re craving something festive. When your sweet tooth goes looking for the ultimate dessert indulgence this year, look no further. Dark Chocolate Macadamia Bark Sprinkled with Sea Salt tastes fully and completely like “real” dessert. Not only will you enjoy every bite, so will the family and friends that you gift it to (hint, hint, don’t eat it all yourself!)
This perfectly Primal dessert is loaded with flavonoids from the dark chocolate and has a positive fatty acid profile from the macadamias. But the very best part about this decadent Primal treat is that you can whip it up in less than 30 minutes using only three ingredients. How’s that for making your gift-giving simple this year?
The full recipe is below, but there’s not a whole lot more to it than melting chocolate, stirring in nuts, sprinkling with sea salt and refrigerating. So why is the result so amazing? First of all, it’s important to use good chocolate. The darker the better, both for health reasons and intensity of flavor. The macadamia nuts add a sweet, buttery component and the crucial sprinkle of sea salt on top is the flavor equivalent of an exclamation point.
The result is a dessert that’s the perfect thing to nibble on around a roaring fire, surrounded by those you love most. Or, at a holiday office party surrounded by those you love a little less dearly. Or, at that neighborhood cookie exchange you can never seem to get out of…wherever the holiday festivities take you, it will be a little bit merrier if Dark Chocolate Macadamia Bark Sprinkled with Sea Salt is your sensible indulgence of choice.
Ingredients:
- 9-10 ounces dark chocolate (aim for 85 – 90% cacao), chopped into small pieces
- 1/2 cup macadamia nuts, roughly chopped
- 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Instructions:
Heat 2/3 of the chocolate in the microwave or on the stove. If using a microwave, heat the chocolate in 30-second increments, stopping to stir vigorously each time. It should take 2 minutes or less to melt the chocolate. If using the stove, create a double boiler by filling a pot with a few inches of water then balance or hold a smaller pot filled with the chocolate just above the water line. As the water gently boils, the steam will melt the chocolate in the smaller pot without burning it. Stir occasionally, removing from heat as soon as the chocolate melts completely.
Remove the melted chocolate from the microwave or stove. Add the remaining hard chocolate to the hot melted chocolate, stirring vigorously until it melts as well.
Stir the macadamia nuts into the chocolate.
Line a rimmed dish of your choice with parchment paper or wax paper. The size of the dish will determine how thick the bark is. A 2-quart squarebaking dish makes thicker bark (like in the photos). A larger dish will obviously yield thinner bark.
Spread the chocolate evenly in the rimmed dish. Sprinkle with sea salt. Refrigerate for at least 10 minutes, longer if chocolate isn’t solid yet. Use a knife to cut the bark into squares or misshapen pieces. Store the bark at room temperature.
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Posted By: Worker Bee 2
Someone mentioned bacon…this is exactly what my husband added the third time he made this at our house. 3 slices of our private piggy bacon crumbled in. Delicious!
The first 2 times, the chocolate looked luscious and smooth coming out of the pan, but then over a few days (we have some serious willpower) it got this dull powdery surface covering. Any ideas why this happened? 85% chocolate was used all times. The 3rd with bacon we have kept in the fridge and so far seems unaffected. Maybe the temperature at which it is stored?
PLease, please, please, don’t EVER put healthy food, real food, living or primal food and ‘microwave’ in the same paragraph or article!
A microwave rearranges the molecules – EVEN IN PLAIN WATER – so your body can’t deal with them and surrounds them with fat molecules and isolates them or otherwaise treats them like ‘disease’.
Of course they destroy all the important living parts, nutrients and antioxidants.
Microwave your dark chocolate and every positive thing we know about it is no longer true!
So just where did you get all of this anti-microwave information?
This looks delicious! If my ears itch or my throat I will deff know it’s the chocolate… Personally you aren’t going to know 100% until you try it. I have Celiac Disease and it’s so hard to thumb down exactly what the problem is each time, so I just try it, if it makes me either sick or I get itchy ears, I know for a fact what caused it and either avoid that product and try something else. But this is far better than eating chocolate that contains other stuff that isn’t natural… I’m going to make it this afternoon… mmmm
Just made some with 85% Lindt, walnuts and Maldon salt. I love this site, and I don’t think the primal diet feels like a diet at all.
Just made some of this using:
85g of 88% dark chocolate
60g of unsweetened bakers chocolate (100%)
15g of shredded coconut
15g of coconut oil
15g of shredded organic flax
mmm!
My favourite is still sugar-free home made snickers!
Yum! I will be making this asap!
This is the chocolate we use. I too have gluten sensitivity, insulin resistance, and Hashimoto Thyroiditis. Needless to say I am a mess, but know with a food clean diet, this too shall pass.
http://navitasnaturals.com/product/439/Cacao-Nibs.html
I also use their coconut sugar.