Pomegranate Bark with Almonds

I know what you’re thinking…

“Pomegranate?? Didn’t she just talk about how they weren’t worth the effort in those pomegranate chocolate chip pancakes?”

I know! I KNOW. I did.

And, I lied.

Well, not really lied. They totally aren’t worth the effort in my mind BUT, you see, when I made these pomegranate orange scones I also happened to buy 2 more pomegranates.

Why?

Well for pictures.

Obviously.

So then I was stuck with 2 of these so ridiculously hard to open pain in my ass fruits.

I gave one to my mom this weekend but then there was still the matter of this other one.

Looking all pathetic in the fruit bowl and getting kind of old and wrinkly. S

o, I manned up and spent 20 minutes picking out arils.

I at least remembered to wear a black shirt this time.

Want to know the only thing this “recipe”requires?

Patience.

Not my biggest strength.

You want the arils to be really dry so the chocolate sticks to them better.

Since I used the water technique to get them out though, this meant waiting 2 hours for arils to dry off.

I’m not gonna lie and say I didn’t contemplate bringing my hair dryer down to the kitchen but visions of arils flying all over stopped me before that became a reality thankfully.

Then you have to wait for the chocolate to firm up. Another 30 minutes at least.

SO MUCH WAITING!

Lucky for me, Ginger thought she’d occupy my time by coming back inside with some unidentified animal’s fecal matter all over her neck.

She’s so considerate, that one.

I made pomegranate chocolate bark and tested out a pomegranate chocolate “cluster” as well.

I’m thinking about including this in some homemade Christmas gifts so I wanted to see which version worked better.

The verdict? The clusters were way less messy, but I like the look of the bark better. Both tasted equally as good.

So let’s talk about this combo.

Holiday bark is all over the place right?

Personally, I hate white chocolate. It’s not chocolate to begin with, it’s just sugar laden, super sweet, creamy nastiness in my opinion and most holiday bark seems to use it.

Which as a side note, unless you’re talking about a birch tree, no actual tree bark is white!

Moving on… So, dark chocolate was a given.

I thought about dried fruit like cherries or strawberries but I’m a much bigger fan of contrasting flavors then sweet on sweet which is what dried fruit + chocolate would give you.

The one redeeming factor of pomegranate seeds is that burst of tartness they give and in this bark combination it is absolutely amazing.

You bite into the rich dark chocolate and the tart arils explode in your mouth (it totally reminded me of Gushers from back in the day) and then you have the sliced almonds for some crunch.

It’s a similar texture experience in this pomegranate popcorn mix!

Texture & flavor heaven, pure and simple. Too bad it’s still too far out from Christmas to use these as gifts, I’ll just have to eat them and make another batch closer to the date.

How unfortunate.

Are you making any homemade gifts this year? 

In addition to this pomegranate bark, I’m thinking of some nut-free granola and maybe candied bacon nut brittle too!