Chocolate Hazelnut Bark

This recipe for hazelnut bark came from the one and only, Martha Stewart. She made it sound easy, as she does with most things, so we allotted a 30 minutes window for bark making from start to finish. The hiccup to our plan was that the skins of the hazelnuts were stubborn and would not let go. The process to remove the skins is first to bake them at 350 for 15-20 minutes.

Then fold them up into a towel for 5 minutes to steam. Followed by rolling them around under the towel to remove their skins.

A lot easier said than done, to say the least. After three rounds of baking, steaming and rolling, we had enough to make the bark. It called for the zest of one orange, an 1/8 teaspoon of sea salt, 2/3 cup chopped hazelnuts and 8 ounces semi sweet chocolate.
Melt the chocolate, mix in most of the hazelnuts and half of the zest. Pour onto a pan covered with tin foil. Top with salt, zest and nuts.
Afterwards, we all went to lunch at Pine State Biscuits (in honor of my pine state boyfriend’s birthday…and because it’s delicious).
I had the McIsley: fried chicken, pickles, whole grain mustard and honey on a biscuit.

Cheers!