Chocolate bark is a classic holiday snack, and it's hard to go wrong with pieces of crispy chocolate combined with nuts, berries, seeds, pepper candies, and other yummy goodies. However, despite its delicious simplicity, your chocolate bark can still turn out wrong if you incorporate the wrong ingredients.

Whatever you do, never add any kind of oil or shortening to your bark, since fat will soften the chocolate and ruin its ability to snap into pieces. Also, you should only add toppings right before your melted chocolate is spread onto parchment paper to cool, so that oils in nuts or other add-ins won't affect the chocolate.

Food & Wine adds that you need to finely chop your preferred type of high-quality chocolate and carefully melt it, making sure not to overheat it. So long as you melt your chocolate carefully and make sure extra fat stays out, you'll have beautifully glossy and hard chocolate bark that satisfyingly snaps into pieces.