Thursday, November 11, 2010

Caramel Chocolate Pretzels Tutorial

This is one of my favorite Holiday gifts! When I make for the Holidays I always make the caramel from scratch. It's fabulous, but a LOT of work! I've been asked several times to bring smaller quantities of these pretzels to events, so that's when I do my super easy, kid-friendly version! This one is simple and a very fun activity to let your kids help with. Here's the steps:
Here's your ingredients: Pretzel Rods, a bag of caramels (I get mine from Target, they carry them year round, look on the bottom shelf), and chocolate morsels.
Quantities: I've found 1 bag of caramel coats about 1 bag of pretzel rods (about 30), and takes about 1 lb. of chocolate.
Here's the time consuming part. Unwrap all of the caramels and put in a pot on your stove. Add 2 Tablespoons of water to 1 bag of caramels.
Melt your caramels over medium/low heat until all of the caramels have melted. It should look like this.
I transfer my caramel to a skinnier, taller microwaveable measuring cup for easier dipping. Now dip your pretzel rods into the caramel. After you've dipped and coated it to your liking, put on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with Pam. It will stick to almost any other surface. As the caramel cools, you can keep putting it into your microwave for 20 second intervals and keep the caramel nice and hot so it will coat the pretzels evenly.

(I was only doing a 1/2 batch for this event so, this is about 1/2 the amount of caramel I would normally have in this container)
Wait until the caramel has completely cooled on your pretzels. Then get your chocolate ready.
Melt your chocolates in the microwave. Start with 1 minute, then do 20 second intervals, stirring after each time, until all of the chocolate is melted. Then start dipping your pretzels into the chocolate. I also added some white chocolate spritzes to add a little decoration to these. But you can do a messy look like these, or use a pastry bag and do even lines across, or I also love rolling them in a mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon.
Once you have dipped in the chocolate, place on wax paper to cool. Do NOT use Pam to coat a surface before putting the chocolate down. The chocolate gets greasy and doesn't dry.
You're all done! My kids love helping me make our easy version and they love eating them! Enjoy!

2 comments:

  1. wow! Great tutorial. Those pretzels look amazing! I think I'm going to make these with my kids this week. My kids are on Spring break...perfect boredom buster :)

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  2. Hello again, just want to add that my ten year old son made these yesterday. They were great! Thank you for your great tutorial.

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