My Favorite Recipes Collection: Loaded Pistachio Homemade Dark Chocolate Bars with salt (Inspired by Our trip to Turkey in May 2022)

I still have not taken Turkey tour out of my system. I often think about all that wonderful delicious food, along with so many sweet treats with abundance of Pistachios !! When we used to make the rest and lunch stop on our Gate1 Tour bus. We found this delicious Nestle chocolate made with dark and milk chocolate and pistachios. One 2.82 oz was like 35-50 cents and was enough to satisfy our sweet tooth after the meal. Didn't even think about bringing these with us back from Turkey... Thought, it is made by Nestle, so we can find it here. NOT !! First of all there are not a single company Swiss, American or any other countries that have many choice of chocolates with pistachio nuts. We looked and looked and finally found these "Damak" Nestle bars with pistachios in a local middle eastern store and each bar was $5.00 which was like 10 x of the price in Turkey.. I said heck with it I am going to make my own dark chocolate bars with pistachios. Thanks to Costco, they sell ~1 lbs bag of roasted shelled, salted pistachios, which I always have in my pantry.

Now only thing I did not have is the chocolate discs. However I had lot of chocolate bars in the house from Christmas gifts and also 2 bags of chocolate chips morsels, regular and dark chocolate. So I decided to make this in bulk and make good use of all the chocolates in my house. I had 8 oz bag of Dove assorted dark, milk and caramel chocolate square and 2 bars of my favorite Chocere dark chocolate bars (49% cocoa), one small bar of Hershey milk chocolate and cocoa powder. So I decided to experiment this recipe with all the ingredients that I had handy.

However you can just use chocolate chips morsels or discs. You may need to add vanilla and may be sugar or condensed milk to make it little sweet as I did not have to add any sweetener due to all the chocolate bars already having sugar in it. I was very pleased with the final product and I got so excited with the results that I did not have patience to press it into thin bark but just made the chunks like the Damak Chocolate bars ~ 1/2 inch. Also, I made in large quantity as we will be going to see our son soon, so thought will make extra to take some for him. You can adjust the recipe according to your need.

You will need following to make this recipe:

A double boiler or steamer or large saucepan with something to rest the glass bowl
A deep glass bowl and a wooden spatula
Microwave
A large baking tray lined with parchment paper
Something to crush the pistachios
Something to press the bars to make them smooth
Cooking spray

Ingredients:

1 bag of three flavor assortment Dove chocolate squares. (Dark, Milk and caramel milk chocolate)
1 10oz bag of semi sweet milk chocolate chips morsels and 1 10 oz bag of dark chocolate chips morsels.
1 small Hershey milk chocolate bar (1.5 oz)
2 Choceur dark chocolate bars (5.28 oz each)
6 heaped tablespoon of Cocoa powder or more if you want it to be more dark
One 14 oz bag of roasted salted pistachios (if you use unsalted raw pistachio you can roast them and add sea salt to the recipe.

Method:

Unwrap all the chocolate and empty the chocolate morsels in the glass bowl.
Break the chocolate bars in to small pieces put them in the bowl.
Place a sheet of parchment paper on a large baking tray.
Spray with cooking spray and set aside
Fill a large sauce pan with water so the bowl will be covered with water on the side without spillage.

Heat the water in sauce pan with something to rest the bowl on.
In the mean time place the bowl with all the chocolate and cocoa powder in the microwave at high setting
Heat it for 3-5 min mixing in between so the all chocolate starts to melt.
Carefully remove the bowl from microwave and place it in the boiling water on stove in sauce pan.
Now comes the patience.
Continue to stir the chocolate with spatula as they continue to melt.
In between you can crush the pistachios in the bag with a mallet.
Continue to stir the chocolate in the bowl with spatula in the boiling water in sauce pan.
You are looking for smooth, creamy pour-able chocolate. The amount of time will depend on the quantity of chocolate.

Once such texture is achieved, carefully pour it on the tray lined with parchment papers sprayed with cooking spray.
Spread the chocolate goo on the baking tray and sprinkle pistachios.
To make thin bars you can spread it in to 1/4 " thickness, but since I put lots of crushed pistachios and was very keen to achieve the thickness of the "Damak" bars. I spread it so it was about 1/2 inch in thickness.
Now sprinkle more crushed pistachio on top and press it with something with greased smooth bottom.
Place the tray in fridge for about 30-40 min (Until chocolate is semi set) then take it out and cut desired size squares and place it back in the fridge.
Once chocolate hardens then you can break in to squares and store in the fridge.
I like my chocolate to be at room temp, so I set if outside for an hour before eating.