Cats On The Homestead: chocolate

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Chocolate Covered Pretzels

Warning. What follows is not healthy. It is addicting. So you may want to turn back now.
My husband loves pretty much all things chocolate. You just have to love a man like that. So today I decided to make some chocolate covered pretzels.

The first step was going to the store to buy a bag of pretzels. Yes I could have made them. No I didn't bother. Sorry, I am not a purest. Don't hold my lack of time and ambition against me please.

Next I took out my trusty double boiler. You may remember it is larger than needed from my Homemade Lip Balm post. I had some left over dipping chocolate from some long forgotten project but not quite enough. So I threw the dipping chocolate and some chocolate chips into the double boiler. I just eyeballed the amounts but I would guess that I used about a cup of each.

Chocolate chips and dipping chocolate in a double boiler

I put my too large metal bowl over a pan of simmering water letting the chocolate melt. I like to stir along the way because I feel like I am doing something. Eventually I guess you really do need to stir. Oh and make sure you do not get any water in the chocolate... not even a drop. It only takes a few minutes to melt the chocolate. Do not let the water boil and do not over cook the chocolate. Don't ask why, just don't... trust me :)

Starting to Melt

Once the chocolate was all smooth and melted, I took my bowl off the pan and over to my work surface to start the rather messy coating process.

Getting a Dip

Simple but messy... and worth it!

I used my handy spatula to push the pretzels into the melted chocolate and two wooden skewers to lift them back out. Now I will tell you from past experience that dipping pretzel sticks or rods is MUCH simpler than dipping the knotted pretzel shape but this time I wanted to be adventurous. Next time I will probably go back to the large pretzel rods, just saying. Once the pretzel was coated with chocolate, I put the skewers through two different pretzel holes and gently shook the pretzel until the excess chocolate dripped back into the bowl. Then I laid each pretzel on a sheet of parchment paper to dry and set.