Vegan Blood And Brains White Chocolate Bark

Halloween is the day Jay most looks forward to each year. And with not many trick-or-treatin’ years left ahead for my favorite preteen, 2020 has been a colossal downer. So I’ve been thinking up some Halloween treats to put a smile on his face, like this Blood and Brains White Chocolate Bark. Jay loves white chocolate, as do I, and it’s such a great flavor with raspberry, which makes this bark a total winner at our home. But first, have you a favorite ghost story to share? I’ll start. With a little one my dad told us all the time on dark, dreary nights, when the thunder and rain hammered away at the windows and the large, oval leaves of the banyan tree outside with its big, stringy, tentacle-like roots, cast eerie shadows all around us. It was about this woman with no face, dressed in a white sari (the dress of choice for Indian woman ghosts). She’d wander around the streets of his childhood town, always at night. Her favorite victims were cooks, because she loved to eat (despite the crucial fact that she lacked a mouth, but go figure). If you found yourself cooking up something delicious at night, you could be dead certain she’d pay you a visit. Her faceless face would pop up right outside the window, shrouded in white, when you were least expecting it. Her long, bony hand would come snaking up to your nose, followed with a singsong plea, “Can I have some?” If you were too scared to oblige, it’d be your blood and brains on the menu. Okay, it sent a chill down my spine just to write that gory little tale. Like so many people, I am a sucker for a good ghost story. And Jay has shaped up into one too. He’ll watch creepy movies and then stay up at night, too afraid to sleep, despite all the yelling and forbidding I do. But Halloween is a good time to put those worries aside, because this is the time of year when ghosts and ghouls become fun, and ghost stories are pretty much de rigueur. So if you have a good one–a real one or a made-up one–be sure to share it in the comments so we can all scare ourselves out of our skins as we munch on this delicious vegan white chocolate bark. Check to get new recipe updates by email.

Why we love this vegan white chocolate bark

It’s melt-in-the-mouth creamy. It’s easy. Easy enough to make with your kids. Although you’ll make the vegan white chocolate from scratch, which should totally make you feel like a domestic god or goddess, this recipe couldn’t get any easier. It’s white chocolate. I can’t imagine anyone not liking it. It’s crunchy. With the walnuts adding so much wonderful texture and, dare I say, nutrition? Kids’ll love it. Guaranteed.

Tips for making the bark

Cacao butter or cocoa butter is your main ingredient here. You will melt the cocoa butter with a fat over a double burner (a bowl placed over a pan of gently boiling water) which will help make it smooth and edibly soft. In this case, I used coconut oil (vegan butter is fine too) and a couple of tablespoons of cashew butter for more creaminess. Once you’ve melted all these down, stir in powdered sugar and a couple of teaspoons of pure vanilla extract. I used two cups of sugar for 8 oz of white chocolate. It was perfectly sweet for me, but if you like your white chocolate sweeter, use more. Take the bowl off the double boiler and, using a hand mixer, blend for a few seconds so everything is well-merged. You can do this with a whisk too, or just skip it. It’s just added insurance. Next add the “brains”–pieces of walnut halves, you can chop them up if you want or leave the halves whole. Pecans are a fine substitute. Pour the white chocolate mixture into a parchment-lined baking or glass dish, making sure the walnuts are evenly distributed. Rightaway, before it begins to set, add the “blood”. I used raspberry jam for the blood, because I love the flavor of white chocolate with raspberry as you already know if you’ve made my White Chocolate Raspberry Cake or my Vegan White Chocolate Pie. But any red jelly or jam is fine. Melt the jam in a small skillet over low heat so it’s a little runny, which will make drizzling it on a bit easier. Use the back of a spoon or a skewer to make it run through the white chocolate. Let the white chocolate stand overnight, in a cool room or in the refrigerator. Then lift out the parchment sheet, peel it off, and break the bark with your hands into 24 pieces. The bark I made is fairly thick and would work just as well if you wanted to cut these with a knife into candy bars. For a thinner bark, use a bigger dish–I used a 9-inch square dish. You can decorate with googly eyes or little spiders if you’re serving these for little ones at Halloween. The ones I used are not edible, but you can find edible googly eyes and spiders at a craft store or online.