Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Put a Pretzel Stick In It




I had a great time making these super easy but fancy gift for friends, family and neighbors on my shopping list.  Initially my plan was to make these with my small grandchildren, ages 4 & 2 but I really think that this turned out to be more of a longer process just due to the sheer number of pretzel rods I had to make.  I had a chance to do a run through with some smaller broken pieces of pretzel covered in chocolate flavored Almond Bark and colorful sprinkles.  They were very yummy and both Noah and Jenna were very happy.

Here is a list of items that you will need for this project:
Pretzel Rods- We purchased the Great Value brand from our Walmart Neighborhood Market.  Unfortunately there were a number of pretzel rods broken in each bag.  Maybe as many as half of them were broken into pieces.  I bought 4 bags initially so I had plenty of pretzels for my project but I wanted you to be away of that problem.
Toppings- I used several types of sprinkles
Almond Bark- Chocolate and Vanilla flavored
Wax Paper
Cookie Sheets
2 wide mouth mason jars
A large sauce pan to use as a double boiler
Holiday gift bags and ribbon

I started my process by laying out all my supplies and getting my toppings ready.  Once the chocolate or vanilla coating gets put than you want to move fast.  I had chocolate sprinkles, snowflake sprinkles and my grandchildren's very favorite rainbow sprinkles.  I also crushed up star mint candies but didn't actually wind up using them.  I guess they just sound better in my mind than their presentation upon completion.



I decided that a large mouth quart glass mason jar was the perfect thing for me to melt both flavors of almond bark in.  I filled a medium pan half full with water and place my clear jars in the water.  I turned the heat on and let the water begin to slowly melt the almond bark.  Meanwhile, I got out all my cookie sheets and lined them with wax paper.

When the almond bark was completely melted I began the process of coating all of the whole pretzel sticks.  There were a lot of broken rods in each back and that was a bit disappointing.  I would say the at least half of them were broken when we purchased them at the grocery store.  I still had plenty of pretzel rods to coat but I would never consider giving a broken one to anyone on my gift list.

The melted almond bark didn't come up as far as I wanted on the pretzel rod so I used a spoon to drip the candy coating up higher on the rod.  I left about 2 inches for me to grasp the pretzel rod but the rest of the stick had a good solid candy coating.

The covered pretzel rod was then quickly placed on the cookies sheet lined in wax paper.  I finished the try before I turned my attention to the sprinkles and such.  I tried to keep an equal number of vanilla and chocolate along with the different toppings.  I do think my favorite was to actually drizzle the almond bark over the opposite coating.  For example rods covered in chocolate flavored almond bark would be drizzled with a vanilla coating and visa versa.  Those I thought turned out the most elegant of all the ones I did.

Here is my finished product.  I have them bagged in holiday gift bags with six pretzel rods in each bag.  I really hope my neighbors and friends will be please to receive these as part of my Christmas gift to them.  What do you think?
 
 
 

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