Unfortunately, we have been unable to get the seasonal Christmas favorite, Espresso Crunch, for our festive treatmakers. We’d like to make a suggestion for your Christmas candy melt mixes and bark: coffee beans.
As most of you probably know, chocolate covered coffee beans are actually a well known treat, and a bark made with coffee beans is both easy and tasty. So here’s what you need:
- 1 lb. Mercken’s Candy Melts of your choice (we used butterscotch for our test).
- 2 oz. whole coffee beans (we used espresso roast beans)
How to Do It
- Take 2 oz. of whole coffee beans, put them in a baggie, and smash them a little bit for about 5 seconds. You can use a glass or rolling pin to pound them. You don’t want them all smashed; there should be a variety of fragment sizes for optimum flavor and crunch.
- Melt the candy melts the way you normally do and mix in the beans.
- Spread the mixture out on a sheet of parchment and let harden.
- When it hardens, you have bark. Break it into pieces of random sizes.
And that’s all there is to it!
You can vary the flavors of candy melts to find your own best flavor combination. You can even vary the flavors of coffee beans (e.g. hazelnut or caramel, etc.) Don’t limit yourself to our recipe.
Have fun!