A sweet and salty chocolate bark recipe made for bacon lovers, featuring crushed pretzels and our Guinness Glaze.
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The past two weeks have been rough if we’re being honest (and that is exactly what we always aim to be). From being sick to having a very stressful week at work, we fell behind a bit on putting together new posts. We planned to release a recipe this week that we have been super excited about, but it just didn’t turn out quite right. Cooking had been hectic, and our photos weren’t working out how we wanted them to. You know, it was just one of those days.
So instead of forcing it and posting something subpar, we decided to call an audible and share a new dessert that we created a few weeks ago!
Our Candied Bacon Chocolate Pretzel Bark was born out of a failed breakfast idea. Really, the goal had been to take our Guinness Glaze and create a Guinness glaze bacon to enjoy with a plate of eggs. What we got instead was a super sweet, super sticky candied bacon with a hint of Guinness flavor. Delicious, but WAY too sweet for breakfast.
So of course, with Nicole being a master of desserts, she decided to make a sweet and savory chocolate bark featuring our new creation. Salty, crunchy pretzel pieces contrast the sugary sweet candied bacon, balanced with a semi-sweet chocolate base for the ultimate 3-ingredient chocolate bark. A perfect blend of salty and sweet, this easy treat will surely be unlike anything else at the dessert table – and it’ll definitely satisfy any bacon lovers out there!
Here’s how to make our Candied Bacon Chocolate Pretzel Bark:
- Make the Guinness Glaze bacon: brush glaze over bacon strips and bake until crispy, then chop into pieces (alternatively, you can simply use brown sugar to make candied bacon)
- Crush pretzel sticks into pieces
- Melt semi-sweet chocolate chips and spread into a brownie pan
- Top chocolate with chopped bacon and pretzel pieces, then gently press down to set toppings into chocolate
- Set bark for 4 hours at room temperature before slicing or breaking into pieces
You can make this sweet and salty chocolate bark recipe for holidays, birthday parties, potlucks, or any kind of event! But you also definitely don’t need an excuse to make this bark. It’ll keep for up to 3 weeks in the refrigerator, so you can just make some for yourself on a random Tuesday and snack on it here and there.
Moral of the story: sometimes cooking experiments don’t go how you expect (or want) them to, but there are plenty of ways to turn a “failure” into something delicious! At first, we were disappointed with our Guinness Glaze bacon because it wasn’t what we expected, but it still tasted good. So we found a way to incorporate it into a recipe that made sense. Sometimes all it takes is reframing your mindset about how something should taste – and you may end up creating something even better than you had initially imagined 🙂
Candied Bacon Chocolate Pretzel Bark
Equipment
Ingredients
Candied Bacon Chocolate Pretzel Bark
- 12 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 40 pretzel sticks
- 6 pieces Guinness Glaze Candied Bacon see below
Guinness Glaze Candied Bacon
- 6 pieces bacon
- ¼ cup Guinness Glaze sub 2 tbsp brown sugar*
Instructions
Guinness Glaze Candied Bacon
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line a small baking sheet with foil.
- Lay bacon strips flat on the pan and brush evenly with Guinness Glaze. (Alternatively, you can sprinkle brown sugar over the bacon.)
- Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until bacon is cooked through.*
- Let bacon cool for at least 5 minutes, then transfer to a cutting board and roughly chop into pieces. Set aside.
Candied Bacon Chocolate Pretzel Bark
- Line an 8×8 brownie pan with parchment paper. Place the pretzel sticks in a resealable bag and crush them into pieces.
- Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave in 30-second intervals. Stir frequently and vigorously until chocolate is fully melted.
- Pour the melted chocolate into the brownie pan and spread into an even layer. Top evenly with crushed pretzels and chopped bacon. Then gently press down on the toppings with the back of a spoon or the flat edge of a knife to set them into the chocolate.
- Let the bark set at room temperature for 4 hours.
- Slice or break bark into pieces, and enjoy! Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 weeks.
Notes
Nutrition
If you have any questions regarding the information presented in this post, please refer to our Nutrition Disclaimer here.
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