Candy-Covered Chocolate-Dipped Pretzel Rods

I wasn’t planning on blogging today, as I’ve got a busy morning, but then I opened up my email and learned that it is National Pretzel Day.  And I just happened to have a pretzel recipe on my “ready to blog about” list.  I couldn’t let this opportunity pass by!  These are the food gifts I gave out to all of our family members last Christmas (hence the Christmas trees and red and green M&Ms, oh yeah, and the candy canes!).  They are really easy and really fun to make.  It’s something I found on Pinterest.  The idea and method came from The Baker Chick; I added specific ingredient quantities.

Candy-Covered Chocolate-Dipped Pretzel Rods

Ingredients:
1 (12 oz.) bag semi-sweet chocolate chips 
1 tbsp shortening
Chopped candy toppings 
15 pretzel rods
White chocolate melts

Directions:
Prepare a cookie sheet or two with covered wax or parchment paper.

In a microwave-safe bowl, melt chocolate and shortening for 60 seconds. Remove and stir, and then warm in microwave for 15 second increments until it is smooth.

Start dipping the pretzels right away. Use a spoon to bring the chocolate up to where you want.  Set rods on the cookie sheet.

Dip about 5-10 pretzels and then start placing the toppings on. You will have to do this by hand because if you try to roll or sprinkle them on it really won’t work and will end up with a sticky candy-glob mess.

Arrange the candy bits on each pretzel rod. (You have a good 5-7 minute window where the chocolate will still be soft enough to press the toppings in.)

If the melted chocolate in the bowl has started to harden, just give it 15 more seconds to get it back to its nice melty-state.

Repeat with the rest of the toppings.

Place tray in the freezer for about 5-10 minutes until chocolate has hardened.

Melt white chocolate (the same way you melted the chips) and place in a plastic baggie.  Cut off a tiny bit of one corner and drizzle over the pretzels.

Place them back into the freezer to harden and then wrap, eat, enjoy!

Makes 15 pretzels.

I didn’t get a picture of the white-chocolate drizzled ones, but they turned out well too.

I used mini M&Ms instead of regular and I thought that worked well.  The third one up there is Heath Bits.  Yum!  They were easy because you can buy bags of those already chopped up in the baking aisle.

Even though I am a total control freak in the kitchen, the holiday spirit got to me and I let my three-year-old daughter, Lena, help me make these.  As you can see, at this point she had already sampled the chocolate!

Improv Challenge: Cranberry Eggnog White Chocolate Chip Muffins

Today is reveal day for the Improv Cooking Challenge.  The premise of this challenge is easy: each month there are two assigned ingredients.  The participants must make a recipe using both ingredients and blog about it.

Last month, the challenge was pumpkin and cream cheese and I made those lovely Pumpkin Cream Cheese Cinnamon Rolls.  They were a big hit!  I’m probably even more excited about my recipe for this month’s challenge ingredients: eggnog and cranberries.  I don’t think I have ever cooked or baked with eggnog before.  It’s not something I like to drink, but I don’t mind the flavor, so I was eager to try it in a baked good.  And muffins are my go-to baked good of choice, which you already know if you are a regular reader.

I found this recipe for Eggnog Cranberry White Chocolate Muffins at Your Homebased Mom.  I was not familiar with Leigh Anne’s blog, but she has some really tasty-looking stuff on there!  I thought these muffins sounded so delicious.  I made just a few minor adjustments.  Here’s my amended recipe.

Cranberry Eggnog White Chocolate Chip Muffins


Ingredients:
2¼ cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
¾ cup eggnog
5 tbsp canola oil
1 tsp almond extract
1 cup fresh cranberries, coarsely chopped
1 cup white chocolate chips
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup flour
½ tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp butter, slightly softened


Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375°.  Coat 18 muffin cups with baking spray.  


In a medium bowl, add together the flour, baking powder, and salt and stir to combine.  In a large bowl, add together the sugar, eggs, eggnog, oil, and almond extract.  Stir until well combined.   Add in the dry ingredients just until incorporated.  Fold in the cranberries and white chocolate chips.  Do not over mix.


Divide the batter among the 18 muffin cups.


For the streusel topping, combine sugar, flour, cinnamon, and butter.  Cut the butter into the dry ingredients with a pastry cutter or a fork until a coarse, crumbly mixture forms.  Sprinkle the mixture  on top of the muffin batter.


Bake for about 18-22 minutes, or a until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Let cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely.


Makes 1½ dozen muffins.

I know this recipe pretty well by now, as I made it three times in about a month.  I made these muffins once, to try them out for the challenge, and they were so good that I made another batch to give to my sister when we went to her house for Thanksgiving, then I made them again for our fellowship/coffee time at church earlier this month.  They are not the easiest muffins to throw together; chopping the cranberries is quite tedious, but the end result is so much better than using dried cranberries.  I love the bright tartness they add to the muffins. They are the perfect balance to the sweetness of the other ingredients.  And I just love their vibrant red color.

As Leigh Anne says in her post, these muffins taste like Christmas!

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Gingerbread Muffins

I hope you’re in the mood for muffins, because I’ve got two great recipes to share with you this week.  And guess what?  They’re both Christmas-y muffin recipes.  I love cooking seasonal food.  Food doesn’t get much more Christmas-y than gingerbread.  I pinned a Gingerbread Waffle recipe to Pinterest a long time ago and so far it has gotten 30 repins.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a waffle-maker. 😦  So what’s the next best thing?  Gingerbread muffins!  This is a Betty Crocker recipe.

Gingerbread Muffins

Ingredients:

¼ cup brown sugar

½ cup molasses

⅓ cup milk

⅓ cup vegetable oil

1 egg

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 tsp ground ginger

½ tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp ground allspice

Raw sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°. Coat a 12 cup muffin tin with baking spray and set aside.

In large bowl, combine brown sugar, molasses, milk, oil, and egg.  In a another bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and allspice.  Gently stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients, until just combined, being careful not to over-stir. 

Divide batter evenly among muffin cups. Sprinkle each cup with a generous pinch of raw sugar.

Bake 13 to 15 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Immediately remove from pan to cooling rack. Cool completely, about 30 minutes.

Makes 12 muffins.

I changed almost nothing about this recipe.  It called for a white chocolate drizzle that I left off.  While it sounds good, they most certainly don’t need it.  They are so great on their own. I think they’re really good with a little smear of butter.

Now you know I am not much of a baker, so these muffins are as close to gingerbread men as I am going to get!

Come back on Thursday for another awesome Christmas muffin recipe.

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Peppermint Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is a variation of a Betty Crocker recipe that I saw in a magazine. They were creme de menthe flavored with green food coloring, but I thought it would be fun to do peppermint flavor with red food coloring for our holiday open house this year.

Peppermint and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

1 pouch sugar cookie mix

6 tbsp butter

½ tsp peppermint extract

1 egg

1 cup chocolate chips

6 to 8 drops red food coloring

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°.

Mix cookie mix, butter, extract, egg, and chocolate chips in a bowl until soft dough forms. Drizzle the food coloring over the dough and lightly stir to swirl it in; don’t mix it in completely.

Using a small cookie scoop or teaspoon, drop dough 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes. Cool 3 minutes; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.

Makes 3 dozen cookies.

I am going to use less butter next time. It called for ½ cup and that’s what I used this time, but reviewers on the Betty Crocker website suggested using less will reduce the amount that they spread out. They did spread out a lot. And I have a tendency to make them too big, so the less they spread, the better! So I will try using less butter next time.

But other than that, they turned out great. Be careful not to mix the food coloring in too much. Light stirring will give you a red swirl while too much mixing will give you a general pink. The swirl is what I was going for.