Secret Recipe Club: Peppermint Bliss Bark

It's the third Monday of the month, and you know what that means! Secret Recipe Club Reveal Day! Our assigned blog this month was The Weekend Gourmet by Wendy from Texas. The Weekend Gourmet features tons of festive recipes for every occasion, from the big game to National Brownie Day to the holidays. Wendy also offers giveaways very often, so check out her great blog for recipe ideas or for the chance to win a prize!

In the spirit of Christmas, we decided to make Wendy's original Peppermint Bliss Bark to include in our treat packages that will be going out to friends and neighbors. This recipe was so easy to make and turned out a delicious bite filled with plenty of different textures and flavors - chocolate, peppermint, oreo cookie and marshmallows. Blissful indeed! We followed Wendy's directions but used fewer peppermint pieces. Our version of her recipe is below. Make this stuff! It's delish!

Peppermint Bliss Bark

from The Weekend Gourmet

Ingredients:

1 12-ounce bag semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup mini-marshmallows

1 cup mini-Oreo cookies

1/2 cup chopped peppermint candies

4 ounces white chocolate

Melt chocolate chips in a double-boiler or very carefully in the microwave. Place marshmallows, cookies and 1/4 cup peppermint candies in a large bowl. Fold in the melted chocolate and gently mix until everything is combined. Lay a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet and spread the mixture onto the paper. Melt the white chocolate in a double-boiler or very carefully in the microwave. Drizzle the white chocolate over the semi-sweet chocolate bark and sprinkle with remaining peppermint pieces. Chill the bark in the refrigerator (or outside if it's cold enough!) for an hour so it hardens. Cut into pieces and store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator until ready to serve/share/eat.

Gather your ingredients

Melt your chocolate

Mix it all together

Melt your white chocolate

Spread it all out on a parchment-lined baking sheet

Cut and serve!

The Great Fried Oreo Experiment

It's fair season, and everyone's talking about what they're frying at the local fairs these days. Twinkies, Oreos, cheesecake slices, butter (yes, butter) - it seems just about everything has been dunked in batter and deep-fried. Since the weather hasn't really been conducive to fair-going, we wanted to bring the fair food home, but what to fry?

The answer came earlier this week via a text from neighbor D: "Can you fry an Oreo?" We texted back, "Like, in general, or can WE fry an Oreo?" We're sure you know what he meant. And thus began The Great Fried Oreo Experiment. As with any experiment, we started with a little research. On the Internet it seems people are all about frying Oreos in pancake batter.   Food Network Magazine's "The Fry Guide" (September 2011) suggested using their Basic Batter  to fry "sandwich cookies." Amy thought they'd be delicious with just a simple tempura coating. A quick meeting of the minds, and we decided to try all three on a dreary Sunday evening (not conducive to fair-going).

We used Double Stuf Oreos (sorta forgetting the part about freezing them first), and we prepared our FryDaddy by bringing peanut oil up to 375 degrees. We then prepared the batters. For the pancakey one (bottom left in picture above), we used Bisquick, following the directions for making pancakes. The Food Network Magazine recipe was: 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 cup cold club soda (top of the "triangle" in picture above). We used McCormick Golden Dipt Tempura Seafood Batter Mix to make the tempura-dipped ones (bottom right in picture above).

All three batters looked alike "raw," so we decided you only needed the one photo

The results? Naturally, not one was pronounced bad. Each one had a hot crisp coating, warm chocolate cookies and melty creamy center. But the unanimous favorite amongst the four taste-testers (D, J, Amy and Chris) was the Food Network Magazine recipe. We knew we had that subscription for a reason! Check out our pix and fry one yourself!

Top row: Tempura (Second Place)

Middle row: Food Network Magazine's Basic Batter (The All-Around Favorite)

Bottom row: Pancake Batter (Honorable Mention)