Alien Pretzels

By srumbel

I was browsing Google+ the other day and saw these darling Alien Pretzels. Only they were called something different and I honestly couldn't ever find the post I originally saw. I tried Googling the heck out of it (Martian pretzels? Cute little green dude pretzels?) and never found it. So I re-created it on my own and they turned out so cute! I would love to credit whoever came up with this idea...Kraft? I can't find it anywhere. At any rate- here are my instructions- make them, they're so easy and so fun. And slightly creepy.
from butterwithasideofbread.com

Ingredients

• 1 bag mini pretzels {you won't use the whole bag, only about 1/4}
• circular candies- I used these little pearls, but you can use Sixlets or any other type of round decoration
• green & orange food coloring, I used about 1/8th tsp of Wilton's gel colors
• 1 bag White Chocolate chips, divided and melted slowly {directions below}
• 1 TBSP shortening, to thin out chocolate
• semi-sweet chocolate chips, for decorating the alien eyes (you'll only need about 3-4 TBSP

Preparation

Step 1

First step is to melt the chocolate. I put 1/3 of the bag of white chocolate chips into 1 small glass bowl, another third into a separate glass bowl then put about 4 TBSP into a small ziplock bag, to use for decorating later on. Before you even put it in the microwave, add about 1/2 TBSP shortening. You need to thin out the chocolate prior to dunking the pretzels or else the chocolate will be so thick you won't even be able to tell it's a pretzel under there! Shortening is the ONLY thing that will do this- don't add water, butter, etc.

Go slowly! White chocolate seizes easily, and you don't want to coat your pretzels with grainy chocolate, right? Go slowly and stir minimally. I put mine on for 1 minute, stirred gently, then put it in for an additional 30 seconds. When I took it out, the chocolate still looked solid. It wasn't! I added green food coloring to one bowl of chocolate, then left the other white. Stir gently, until it's nice and smooth. These 2 bowls of chocolate are what you'll use to coat your pretzels.

I've tested out a few ways to coat pretzels in chocolate and none of them really work as well as simply using your fingers. So that's what I do! As you dip the pretzels, try and have the bottom hole of the pretzel stay empty- this is what makes the mouth of the alien and you want it to be open! I used a toothpick and just sort of poked it in as I was holding the coated pretzel to open it back up (if the chocolate coated it closed.)

Once you've coated the pretzels, lay them on a sheet of parchment to cool and dry. While they cool, you can start decorating. Put about 3-4 TBSP of the semi-sweet chocolate in a small ziplock bag and melt that in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Do the same for a small amount of the white chocolate. I did even another small bag of the white chocolate and put orange food coloring in it!

***I'm going to put another shameless plug for Chocoley Chocolate products- the white drizzling chocolate and dark drizzling chocolate in the squeeze bottles works amazing for these treats! It melts so fast and they taste fabulous. {No I don't work for them but yes they have amazing stuff!} Moderately priced and if you subscribe to their email list, they send out discount coupons all the time!}***

Once you've got your decorating chocolate melted I liked to fill the 2 top holes of the pretzels with either the melted semi-sweet chocolate. Fill them all the way up but not overflowing. Then you can add a pearl candy and even an additional dab of orange chocolate on top to make the eyes look extra creepy. Get creative and have fun with it!