With the holidays coming up, there will be a lot of gathering within families and friends. When there is gathering, food will always be involved. Sometimes it’s hard to think about what to bring to the gathering. Recently I’ve scrolling through social media and there was brownie bark that was trending. I decided to try it out. I’ve made several b batches and finally found the one I like. I love that I don’t need a lot of ingredients and it can make quite a big batch. It’s thin and I can break up it up. It’s very similar to chocolate bark but lighter (you don’t use as much chocolate) so you can enjoy it guilt-free; sort of.

What’s the difference between brownie bark vs chocolate bark?

Brownie bark is essentially a brownie but spread thinly and it breaks up really easily. It has most of all the ingredients you would find in a traditional brownie like flour, butter but instead of whole eggs, you would use egg whites. Chocolate bark is mostly just tempered chocolate (melted chocolate and some regular chocolate) and you add topping onto the chocolate.

Ingredients

The ingredients for the brownie bark is very similar to brownie recipe. The difference is that we are using egg whites instead of whole eggs. The batter won’t rise as much and we want to keep it crispy.

The other ingredients are cake flour (less gluten formation), sugar, salt, dark or semi sweet chocolate, butter and bit cocoa powder and milk powder. This recipe doesn’t have any milk or water so we used milk powder to give it a bit of milky flavour.

How to make it

In the beginning, I found it difficult to get an even layer so I wasn’t getting the crispy texture evenly. I also found that using a parchment paper isn’t great for spreading the brownie batter, that also affected its texture.

Instead I used teflon or silicone baking sheet(it’s okay to bake on teflon sheet not to fry in teflon pans). It has a better ability to stick onto the pan and doesn’t move around when you are spreading the brownie batter.

The first step is to melt the chocolate and butter together. Put in sugar, salt and mix. Add in room temperature egg whites. Then sift in cake flour, cocoa powder and milk powder. Then mix together until the batter is smooth.

Pour the batter into the tray. Either lift the tray and start to move the batter or use a spatula to. You want it as thin as possible so it’s crispy but easy to bite through. If you don’t spread it thin enough, you will have softer texture in the middle and really hard cookie on the outside.

Pro-tip

Let the egg white come to room temperature. It won’t shock the melted chocolate and butter (since they are warm)
Don’t use parchment paper, it’s really hard to spread the batter thinly without the parchment paper moving. Unless you use a bit of the batter to tape down the parchment paper
The alternative is to use a silicone or teflon mat or a non stick pan.
If you don’t have a non stick pan or silicone mat, use a bit of oil or melted butter to brush a thin layer on the pan.