Happy New Year, dahling! There are so many amazing things we have planned for 2016. From my home to yours, here’s to 2016 being your best year yet.

I decided to start out the year with some goal-planning. Dahling, you have to envision where you see yourself and your business and put that vision on paper. A great visual tool to outline your goals is a vision board. You can make a collage of magazine clippings or special pictures or phrases you print out to create your board. In fact, many of my dinner parties often end in a vision-setting party where each person creates a mini vision board. It’s lots of fun and very effective in helping you reach your goals.  A vision board is a road map to your next stop. You should try it, dahling.

At one of my parties, a friend of mine brought me a box of magazines to use for vision boards. On New Year’s Day, I organized that box into categories and created cute tent cards identifying each category. Trust me, it was a lot more fun that it sounds. Besides, this activity is the entire reason you now have this amazing recipe I’m sharing with you. After organizing all of the magazines, I was so inspired and hungry (is there an inspired equivalent of hangry? No? There ought to be!) that I created my Sweet Island Mango Chocolate Bark.

This decadently delicious dessert has just a hint of spiciness. I’ll tell you why. A few days ago, I visited the Caribbean Supermarket (a Jamaican girl’s Wal-Mart) in Orlando. That, dahling, was when I hit the mother lode. I  found a jar of Eaton’s West Indian Mango Jam and Nel’s Old Time Hot Pepper Jelly. Now, let me tell you, I LOVE West Indian mango. It was my favorite growing up in Jamaica. Lazy Summer afternoons were spent under the mango tree eating its ripe fruit, with sticky, sweet juice running down my hand. On days when I’m too impatient for the mango to ripen, I’d have a green mango with salt. Look, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

So, imagine my bliss when I found these two beauties. Now, I’m not an “either or” kind of girl. “This and that” is more my speed. So I decided to make a dish with both of these and chocolate and coconut and the tartness of cranberries. And is a good thing, dahling. My Sweet Island Mango Chocolate Bark hits all the right notes. The sweetness of the mango easily complements the earthiness of the chocolate. The Hot Pepper Jelly adds just the right amount of heat while the tartness of the cranberries rounds out the flavors. It’s a major flavor pay off with very little effort.

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