Cake batter and sprinkle bark

This recipe comes to you by way of one of of my favorite bloggers these days -- you guessed it -- Sweetapolita. Obviously I haven't outgrown my childhood need for sprinkles, because this called out for me as soon as I saw it on Rosie's blog. Heck, my favorite donut is the Hawaiian so this was a no-brainer.
You may notice some of the nonpareils and jimmies are not evenly distributed. That's because I decided I would include my son in this venture and he just dumped them right in the middle as I yelped and tried to spread them in the melting chocolate. And he went back to watching race cars on his iPad. Right.

But the beauty of this bark is that it's okay to be uneven, crooked.

Substitutions: Really the decoration is up to you so it shouldn't even count as a substitution but I used silver and gold dust as well as the nonpareils and jimmies, which is not so obvious in this photo. Why not use Christmas-coloured sprinkles instead, if you are making these for the holidays? Or baby blue and white ones for a shower? It's a blank canvas, really.

Would I make this again? Maybe. Probably, for my kid's next birthday if there are other children there. But I have to admit I liked this recipe for bark better. It's one of my first blog posts ever, and I have made it again and again. It's more time consuming, though, and better suited to the mature crowd than the under-four-foot set.

Grade: Three-and-a-half stars out of five.

Pssst. Have you entered my cookbook giveaway yet? It's still open. Go do it now!