Easiest Holiday Snack EVER

Mommy? is allergic to cooking. Also? She's still supposed to be on bed rest, so you KNOW this is super easy.

For the past few years, we have made simple chocolate peppermint bark to give to friends and party hostesses and my teachers like Luke and the storytime librarian (she didn't get any this year - but mostly because we haven't had the energy to hit storytime, not because we're holding a grudge or anything).

Mommy is not a good photographer. I promise this stuff is better than it looks in these pictures!

Seriously. If Mommy can do this, ANYONE can do this. Probably I could even do this, but this particular batch was made after I went to bed.

Ingredients: 1 bag of chocolate chips, 1 box of candy canes, some mint extract

• You can get whatever chocolate chips you want - or even add a layer of white chocolate on top of your semi-sweet. Mommy? does not like white chocolate (it's not chocolate!), so we leave that out of ours, but to each his own.

• Candy canes are pretty easy to find this time of year, but you can also use a bag or starlight mints if you want. The most time-consuming part of the entire recipe is unwrapping your peppermint candy, so choose wisely.

• We found our mint extract right near the other flavorings in our grocery store, but we have heard from friends that they had difficulty tracking it down where they live. Not really sure what to say to that - so, um, good luck I guess?

Unwrap your peppermint candy and bash it into smaller pieces. Usually, Mommy puts it in a large-ish ziploc baggy and has at it with the bottom of a saute pan. She was pretty sure that standing for a period of time and bashing hard candy repeatedly would be frowned upon by her MFM, so she decided to try the food processor this time instead; she threw it in the bowl and hit pulse a bunch of times. The food processor method did not work as well - we ended up with mostly too-big pieces and a bunch of candy cane dust. We recommend, therefore, the saute pan method, but your food processor will do in a pinch. Put your crushed up candy aside.

Dump your bag of chocolate chips in a bowl and throw it in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time, stirring between rounds, until they are fully melted. This probably takes about 2 minutes all together? Add in the mint extract a capful at a time until you've got your own preferred chocolate mint balance (Daddy likes this step - he got to taste). Pour the mixture onto a cookie sheet covered with a layer of wax paper and spread it out so it covers evenly at about 1/4" thick.

Ours looks kind of lumpy because Mommy decided to change it up a bit this year and stir some of the candy cane dust/smaller pieces directly into the chocolate. While it did not adversely effect the final product, it made it more difficult to spread evenly and really didn't make it any better, so we won't do that again.

While the chocolate is still melty, pour the candy cane pieces onto the top. Press them into the chocolate slightly so that they stick into your bark. Put the cookie tray into the fridge until it sets - maybe an hour?

Once the chocolate is hard, peel it off the wax paper and break it into pieces. Put it into the container of your choice (last year we had snowman printed baggies; this year Mommy got plastic containers at the grocery store) and you are done!

Max's mommy likes it so much, she said she ate half of what we gave her within a few hours!