This Easy Ina Garten Recipe Is My Go-To Gift This Season—It's Delicious

I would have made Ina Garten's French Chocolate Bark even if the instructions read, "Sprinkle in little bits of paper and scented erasers." The Ina hype is real. Everything turns out better than I imagine, with less effort than I expect. And even though the "French" and "bark" terminology skews a little pinkies-out, the part where you nuke the chocolate in the microwave tells me this one's right up my alley.

This recipe is one of Garten's favorite host gifts. It's especially great for people who have everything, who appreciate thoughtful homemade gifts, who love chocolate, who love fruit, who ... OK, the point is that it blows a boring bottle of Beaujolais out of the water.

Why I Love Ina Garten's Chocolate Bark

But first, I made a batch for myself. Maybe it's because my mom encouraged my sisters and I to gift things we'd love to have ourselves, but I figured I should do a dress rehearsal before hitting the road with my one-woman Chocolate Party tour. Not-a-spoiler alert: It is quintessential Contessa.

Friends who received the shreds of whatever made it past my kitchen counter agreed, raving about the high-quality flavor of the chocolate (Ina's suggestion to use "very good" chocolate is a liberating enigma—and spot on). And the ginger's crunchy, crystallized sugar coating feels extra festive. Every inch is a perfect bite.

How I Make Ina Garten's French Chocolate Bark

To start things off, Ina has us baking roasted and salted cashews in the oven, turning them a toasty, slightly "off-cashew" color. While they cool, you chop the chocolate—which was giving Michelin Star vibes because who chops chocolate before they eat it? (Professional chefs. Not me.) I also gave myself a little pat on the back for skimming the entire recipe before I started, because not all of the chocolate goes into the microwave at once (half of the bittersweet chocolate gets stirred in later).

Make sure you have your rectangle guide drawn on your parchment before prepping your chocolate. My lo-fi apartment microwave has the heating power of an Easy-Bake Oven, but it still melted the chocolate within five 30-second increments. And even though I couldn't find semisweet chocolate in bar form, morsels melted just fine. ("How easy is that?")

After spreading the melted chocolate onto your parchment (I spent way too long trying to create semisweet beach waves), you finally get to add all the good stuff to your bark. There's an order to this: candied ginger then cashews, cherries, apricots, and raisins—which clearly reveals Ina's not-so-secret dried fruit hierarchy. The chocolate began to harden as I was dotting my dessert canvas, so work fast and make sure each piece is embedded in soft chocolate. (Anything that isn't will fall off later.)

Allowing two hours of rest to completely harden the chocolate, you just cut the bark and wrap it up. Is tying each package with printed "Barefoot Contessa" ribbon a little too much? Yeah. I don't think so, either.

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