Let the Christmas baking begin!  I'm excited to be sharing a few Christmas-y recipes in the next few weeks, and you can always browse through my archives for some more Christmas classics!

We make several different types of bark every year for Christmas, including cranberry almond, peppermint bark, and (my favourite) toffee pretzel bark.  If you do decide to check out some of the other bark recipes I've linked here, please have a good laugh at some of my old photos.  Oh my!  

What I love about bark is that it is so stinkin' easy and so delicious!  Seriously, you just throw a few things together, and bam...you're done!  And it looks like you did way more work than you actually did.  That's called a win win situation folks.

almond topped caramel graham wafer bark

recipe: slightly adapted from: Jean Pare - Holiday Entertaining

Directions:

1)  Grease a 10x15 inch cookie sheet with graham crackers.  You might need to cut some of them in half or in quarters to fill in the edges.  
*If there are any gaps between the crackers and the edge of the pan, the caramel will run off!

2)  Sprinkle half of your almonds evenly over the crackers, and set aside.

3)  In a medium saucepan, melt together your butter and brown sugar.

4)  Bring mixture to  a boil, and cook for 3 minutes.

5)  Immediately (and gently) pour your caramel mixture over the crackers.  The caramel doesn't have to be quite even over the crackers, as it will magically even out while it bakes in the oven!

6) Sprinkle the rest of your almonds over the caramel.

7)  Bake at 350 degrees for 7 minutes.  Remove and allow to cool.

8)  Carefully heat up each of your chocolates (separately).  I just did them in the microwave and stirred them often as they can burn easily.   

9)  Place each kind of chocolate in a small ziplock bag, cut a very small hole in one corner of each, and drizzle each chocolate over the bark.

10)  Allow the chocolate to set before cutting.  Then serve!

*These freeze well!  So you can pop some in your freezer and pull them out as needed.

Ingredients:

Graham crackers (soda crackers work well too!)

1 cup butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup slivered almonds

1/4 cup white chocolate melting wafers

1/4 cup dark/milk chocolate melting wafers

Also, please don't judge me on the recipe title.  It was a real struggle.  I really wanted it to be descriptive, and then just ended up describing exactly what it was.... #foodbloggerproblems

Anywho...Happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans out there, and Happy Thursday to the rest of the world!

-Kels