Pretzel Rods

I was looking for something new for a colorful baby shower dessert type treat, and stumbled upon chocolate dipped pretzel rods on Pinterest.  It looks like these have been around for awhile, although I'd never seen them before, which is another reason I LOVE Pinterest!

INGREDIENTS:

• Pretzel Rods
• Candy melts (I prefer Wilton here)
• Microwave safe container with some depth for dipping pretzels
• Sprinkles to decorate

First you need to melt your Candy Melts according to microwave instructions on the package.  While you do not need a measuring cup for measuring, I used my microwave safe measuring cup as reference for the depth in dipping my pretzel rods.  The cup was deep enough to cover over 1/3 of the pretzel with vanilla chocolate and helped me keep all pretzel coatings similar in length.

I forgot to take any pictures of the dipping process, but one thing worth sharing is how to keep the dipped pretzel coating smooth while it hardens.  I tested laying the freshly dipped pretzels on wax paper while the candy hardened, but this resulted in the candy coating becoming flat on one side which did not look good.

The solution: Use a container of rice from your pantry to hold the pretzel rods upright while the melted candy hardens smoothly! (I was careful and somehow avoided leaving any blue sprinkles behind in the rice... but I will laugh if little bits of blue sugar show up in any future cooked rice!  :)

It worked best to dip pretzels with melted chocolate first and let them partially dry for a few minutes before covering with the sprinkles.  Once I had covered 3 to 4 pretzels with chocolate, I was able to return to pretzel #1 and add sprinkles, since the chocolate was still soft but not runny.  Otherwise my sprinkles just ran down the wet melted candy.  I could then continue the sequence with 3 to 4 pretzels at a time until all were dipped in chocolate and sprinkles.

To achieve the double drizzled effect, I let the base candy layer completely dry and then placed the hard coated pretzels on wax paper to drizzle the second candy color.  Dip a spoon in the melted chocolate and swing it back and forth over the pretzels for a drizzle pattern.  Once the first drizzled chocolate dries, rotate the pretzel so you can drizzle the back side to complete all around.

It was so fun to work with two colors of candy melt plus two types of sprinkles and end up with so many variations of the two color patterns.

The entire process of candy coating one bag of pretzel rods took only about 2 hours and I was thrilled with the results!

The final color decorated combination worked well with these Square Pretzel treats together on the same table.