The final treat Taryn and I made for work was chocolate bark and it probably turned out to be my favorite!  We made two different versions of this.  One with crushed candy canes and the other with chopped pistachios and cranberries.  It was such a simple dessert to make, but looked so beautiful and festive once it was done!

For each tray we used almost two full bags of chocolate chips – one of milk and one of semi-sweet.  By this point in the night we decided to microwave our batches of chocolate which works just as well as melting it on the stove-top.  I would recommend doing this in one minute intervals to be sure you are able to stir the chips enough.  

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, pour the chocolate on and add the treats!  

One good thing to do once you have put your treats on the melted chocolate…try to gently push the toppings down.  It helps to insure things really stay put once the chocolate is dry.  These should sit out to harden over night and even longer if you test a corner out and it doesn’t feel like it can break easily. 

So pretty, simple and delicious! 

Another treat I made at the work baking party with Taryn, were these tasty chocolate dipped pretzels!  I had never made these before, but loved how easy they were.

We didn’t have any particular recipe we followed and simply decided to mix one bag of milk chocolate chips and one bag of semi-sweet chips on the stove in our homemade double boiler.  I think short pretzel rods are best for this, as you can get a large portion of the pretzel covered with chocolate and easily roll them in any toppings you feel would be fun.  We decided to go for sprinkles and crushed candy canes!

One bag of pretzels made about 80 of these treats…not bad!  One tip, this dessert seems to be a lot easier to make with two people…one to dip and one to roll in sprinkles/candies!

They ended up being the perfect size to fit in clear bags to pass around!

Enjoy & happy eating!

Baking treats for friends and family is my favorite type of gift to give during the holidays.  You’re able to share delicious treats with a lot more people than if you were to buy individual gifts and that couldn’t make me happier!

This year, my friend Taryn and I decided we would bake various treats for all the wonderful people we work with that help us on a daily basis.  After brainstorming countless treat ideas, we decided to start with candied nuts!

The recipe we used (find it below) was only for walnuts, but we decided to add pecans and almonds to mix things up and a bit of cinnamon and both were a good decision!

The recipe also was only for 1 cup, but we made 9…  We realized after that 1 cup was probably a good idea since it was not the easiest thing to stir!