Valentine's Chocolate Bark

Chocolate bark is a flat slab of chocolate covered with things like nuts, dried fruit, sweets or with a different colour chocolate swirled through it. I decided to make some chocolate bark with my daughter for Valentine’s Day and made up a recipe as I went along (with a nod to Marks & Spencer’s Percy Pig Choc Corn which I had at Christmas). This makes plenty for a family to enjoy or to give to three or four people in little gift bags.

You need:

300g white chocolate

Pink food colouring

Handful of gummy sweets - I used Haribo Heart Throbs which are usually part of their star mix but you can buy them separately especially at this time of year - I got a box in Poundland Handful of Smarties or M&Ms. I was going to just pick out the pink smarties from a sharing bag I had but my daughter ate most of them!

Handful of popcorn

Handful of marshmallows - I used heart shaped marshmallows that I got from Flying Tiger

Line a small square baking pan with greaseproof paper. Melt the chocolate in a Bain Marie or in the microwave and stir in a couple of drops of pink food colouring.

Pour the melted chocolate into your prepared tin and sprinkle liberally with sweets, marshmallows and popcorn. Put in the fridge until set.

When the chocolate has set hard, remove from the pan and peel off the greaseproof paper. Carefully cut into chunks - I found the easiest way was inserting the point of a dinner knife and pressing down and the chocolate broke itself into random shaped chunks. We ended up giving these as a gift to my daughter’s nursery teachers!