I’m bringing you summer in a big way today – just look at this simply gorgeous white chocolate sunset bark! Is it a tropical sunset, or just some yummy white chocolate with food colouring and sprinkles? Who even knows.
💜💜💜❤️❤️❤️💛💛💛
Major love for this stuff. White chocolate is my new fave.
Although this stuff is the easiest recipe around, I did have to have two attempts at it. I didn’t think things through the first time, and just drizzled the chocolate all over the place – it seriously didn’t look like a sunset guys. So for round two I made sure to get some horizontal stripe action going on, and I’m just so happy with how it turned out.
The ‘ingredients’ list for this sunset bark is so short it’s almost a joke. All you’re going to need is some delicious good quality white chocolate, some powdered food colouring, and some sprinkles.
Yep, that’s it.
When it comes to putting colour into chocolate, make sure you don’t use anything water-based. If you add water to chocolate, it will seize up and turn into a horrible crumbly mess. Don’t be tempted to even try. Instead, follow my lead and use some powdered colouring, specifically these PME Edible Food Powders. The exact colours I used were Sunset Orange, Raspberry Delight, Canary Yellow, and Purple Haze.
You can also use oil-based food colourings that have been specifically designed to colour chocolates, or even add some coloured candy melts in with the chocolate when melting – although you may not get such a vibrant colour this way.
As you will see above, you only need about a quarter of a teaspoon of colouring to colour the 100 grams of melted chocolate in each bowl, but add a little more if you want a more vibrant colour – it won’t affect the taste. Pour the coloured chocolates onto a cookie sheet covered in baking parchment (like in the photo above) and then spread each colour, one at a time, across the parchment. I used an offset spatula to do this, and made sure to wipe the spatula on a piece of kitchen paper between each stroke, so as not to get the colours all muddied together. A little bit of colour mixing is fine – in fact, it’s what you want – but too much and the colours will start to lose their vibrancy and will go a little brown.
You can just leave the sunset bark as it is, or if you want to go all-out, then there’s always room for sprinkles, right? You can probably find some pre-mixed sunset sprinkle mixes out there (this Sweetapolita mix looks perfect) but I bought some individual packs of strands and dragees from ebay and just mixed them up together. And I think they look just as pretty 😍
Just make sure you use good quality white chocolate, as simply melting it down and adding some colourings is not going to alter the taste at all. My pick is the Lindt Excellence white chocolate with vanilla – although any good quality bar will be fine. For once, I’d advise against using Green and Blacks for this though, as it is so high quality that it has little tiny specks of vanilla bean in it, which would probably show up in your bark.
- 400g (14oz) good quality white chocolate
- Pink, orange, purple, and yellow food colouring powder
- Sprinkles
- Break the chocolate up into squares and place in a microwave safe bowl. Melt in the microwave in 20 second bursts, mixing between each. Alternatively, melt in a bowl over a pan of simmering water.
- Once the chocolate has completely melted, spoon about a quarter of it into each of four small bowls. Add about half a teaspoon of the pink food colouring to one of the bowls, and mix well until you the colour is vibrant. Add a little more food colouring if needed. Repeat with the three other bowls of chocolate, adding a different colour to each. You should then have four bowls of vibrantly coloured white chocolate.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment or greaseproof paper. I greased the tray to help keep the parchment in place, but this is entirely optional. Place the purple chocolate in a dollop at the bottom left of your baking parchment, and then place the remaining three colours in dollops above this - see photo in the post above for guidance on how to do this. You should then have a four blobs of different coloured chocolate in a line at the side of your baking parchment.
- Grab a spatula or knife, and gently spread the chocolate out across the baking parchment. Wipe the spatula or knife on some kitchen paper between each swipe, so as to avoid muddying the colours too much. Keep spreading out until the chocolate is an even thickness across the paper. Don't worry if the edges aren't neat - untidy edges can be broken off later.
- Hit the baking sheet down on the table a couple of times to even out the chocolate a little bit more. Place in the fridge to set for at least half an hour. Once completely set and hard, break apart with your hands into shards. You can score the chocolate with a sharp knife before breaking if you like.
- Always use powdered or chocolate-safe food colourings when colouring chocolate. Normal water-based food colourings will cause the chocolate to seize up and be unusable.
- The bark will keep for a good few weeks. Make sure to keep somewhere cool (not necessarily in the fridge).
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