chocolate dipped pretzels

though this is labor intensive, i've recently gone into a chocolate pretzel craze.

the time put in to these is totally worth the joy i get from the friends i give this to.

your ingredients are;
a bag of pretzel sticks
sprinkles (for christmas, use nonpareils in christmas colors)

dark chocolate, melted (you can have from 5 ounces or more, depending on how much you want to make)

1. lay out 2 cookie sheets covered in parchment paper. melt your chocolate. you can either do that by microwaving in a microwave-safe bowl, or over the stove. i do over the stove by filling the ;

*now i know that it looks weird... but i don't like microwaving the chocolate, and i don't have a double boiler. i used that strainer to be more careful with the glass bowl and the saucepan.

2. using the help of your spatula, coat at least 3/4 of the pretzel in chocolate. twirl it so you can get off some of the excess and so you can make it look like the picture to the left (i'm sorry that it's not very focused on that, but you get the point). place on the parchment paper. use your sprinkles after every few pretzels that you dip until you can work up your speed to do it by about 10.

you dont want to give too much time for the chocolate to set since then you wouldn't be able to get the sprinkles to stick. these guys cool within 5-10 minutes, which from there you can loosen them from the parchment.

* one of the things i love about making these is that they take very little space on the parchment, so you can put these guys right next to each other - as long as the chocolate doesn't touch.

as a gift, you can line a candy box (either homemade or purchased - i bought mine at michaels!) with tissue paper and put the pretzels neatly into the box.

add a cute bow and seal your little box with tape, or something a little more personal (i got that homemade sticker in a set of 24 for just a buck at michaels).

and voila! simple and delectable!

dont forget that there are lots of different packagings available at michaels.