Dark chocolate meets crunchy chocolate chip cookie crumbles meets WOW.

A holiday chocolate bark is becoming somewhat of a tradition around here. Well, if you don’t count the last two years which I embarrassingly skipped. Still, before that we had fruity chocolate bark, peanut butter cup chocolate bark, and mint chocolate swirl bark (and don’t make me choose a favorite because I refuse).

Chocolate bark makes a great handmade holiday gift, and, once you get the hang of tempering chocolate, is super easy to throw together. You could really top it with just about anything. Once your bark is set, break it up into bite-sized pieces, pack it into a cello gift bag and tie with a pretty ribbon and gift tag.

This bark was made for crunchy cookie lovers (you know who you are). If you prefer chewy cookies, use room temperature butter instead of melted butter (and cream with the sugar before adding the other ingredients). Identical proportions, vastly different results. The melted butter bakes into a crunchy cookie crumble, while the creamed butter version, with identical ingredients otherwise, stays softer and chewy after the same time in the oven. Go figure.

While I am a chewy cookie fan through and through, in this case I decided the crunchy kind was the winner. It’s the perfect textural complement to the snappy chocolate.

OR if you want to be really wild… don’t even bake the cookie crumble. It’s eggless afterall, so it’s perfectly safe to eat raw, and you’ll have yourself some wicked chocolate chip cookie dough bark. It’s not quite as portable as the baked version (you’ll want to keep it refrigerated), but how awesome does that sound?

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