Dark Chocolate and Pomegranate Bark: Tom Faglon makes homemade gifts for the holidays. His gift to Melissa Clark: a dark chocolate and pomegranate bark with just a hint of ginger and sea salt.  Chocolate bark is the workhorse of homemade holiday gifts: easy, crowd-pleasing, expected.  But youâve never seen chocolate bark like Tom Faglonâs chocolate bark. Instead of nuts, or dried fruit, or chopped-up peppermint candy canes, he scatters fresh pomegranate seeds over the surface, where they glisten like rubies. Chewy bits of candied ginger are hidden inside the bittersweet chocolate, lying in wait to surprise you with their spiciness. Then, to make things even more interesting, Mr. Faglon strews the top with crunchy sea salt.  His bark is as sweet and juicy as a box of chocolate-covered cherries, but a lot more sophisticated.  Even better for the busiest time of the year, a pound of it takes less than 10 active minutes to make.  I came across Mr. Faglonâs recipe as I was poring over the nearly 150 messages that Dining section readers sent to us with their favorite sweet homemade holiday gifts. Recipes came in from all over the world. There was an unusual anise-oat crescent cookie from Rome. A recipe for chocolate-dipped, marzipan-covered apricots was sent from Paris. From closer to home, Brooklyn, came a farmersâ-market-inspired fruit compote.  So I put on my apron and got to work, testing my way through a dozen of the offerings. My methodology for choosing what to test operated on a gut level. If my mouth started to water as I read the recipe, I printed it out.  There were plenty of variations on chocolate bark, but none as intriguing as Mr. Faglonâs.  Mr. Faglon, a retired phone company employee living in Somerset, N.J., and his wife, Diane, blog about food, antique collecting and the adventures of their 10 cats. He started making chocolate bark many years ago, using dried cherries, almonds, pistachios and the like.  He came up with this wonderful innovation a few weeks ago when he was trying to think up something new to do with chocolate bark, and he happened to have a container of pomegranate seeds in need of a home. (I can relate to this method of recipe developing.)  The only downside to Mr. Faglonâs recipe is that because the pomegranate seeds contain a lot of moisture, the bark isnât something you want to keep around for very long. It will start to weep after a day or so. This said, itâs easy enough to make in the morning and give out that afternoon. And it will still taste good days later even if it starts to look a little tear-stained.  A more stable homemade sweet that is just as tasty, if not quite as strikingly pretty, is the spiced pecan praline recipe sent in by Elizabeth Choinski of Oxford, Miss.  Living in the South, Ms. Choinski has seen plenty of pralines in her time, flavored with the likes of chocolate and coffee. But she had never come upon pralines imbued with the classic spice flavors of the holidays. So she made her own, mixing cloves and cinnamon into the pot.  âI thought it would be a good combination,â she wrote in her email. âI was wrong; itâs a great combination.â The pralines are superb: aromatic, creamy as they melt in your mouth, then crunchy from the nuts.  I wouldnât be able to attest to their keeping qualities if I hadnât stashed a few away in the back of the cupboard and promptly forgotten about them. Three weeks later, on a sugar-craving tear, I unearthed and devoured them, still just as good as when I first made them. They are also very sturdy, and would do well mailed across the country. Both are excellent qualities in a homemade gift.  Some of my favorite sweet holiday gifts come in liquid form. We got several recipes for homemade vanilla extract. But because they all needed a minimum of two to three months to mature, I didnât have time to test them properly.  Instead, I chose to make a cranberry cordial submitted by Corey Balazowich of North Canton, Ohio, that required only two weeks of steeping. Scarlet-hued, with just enough sugar to offset the tartness of the berries, this vodka-based spirit was a resounding success. Itâs also a good place to use up cranberries left over from Thanksgiving.  Your friends will be thrilled to receive any of these homemade holiday gifts. I know mine will be, too. And we all have you, our readers, to thank.
Chocolate bark with pomegranate bite, spiced pralines and a cranberry cordial are among the offerings of sweet homemade holiday gifts from Dining section readers.