Witch Wands

One of our good friends from small group, Shelbi, invited us to her Halloween/Birthday/Ranger-game-watching party this weekend. She asked that guests bring a Halloween treat from a pot-luck list she created. All the treats she listed were creative Halloween snack recipes from a website called Our Best Bites. Genius idea? I think yes! So fun. I love the idea of encouraging people to try new recipes! I browsed the website and decided on Witches Wands (thank you OBB for this awesome idea and all the suggestions and tips on how to make them!). I've never made chocolate dipped pretzels before, and I loved the idea of being able to chose whatever chocolate and decorations you want. Lately I've been really inspired by blogs & websites (like this one and this one) that show the step-by-step process for various recipes (they make everything look so yummy and easy), and I wanted to try to do something similar for our Halloween treat. But how to deal with gooey chocolate and a camera at the same time??? Conveniently, my sweet husband is very good at taking pictures, and agreed to be my photographer while I worked. So without further ado, my version of how to make chocolate dipped pretzels:

Like I said before, the best part of this recipe is that you can choose any kind of chocolate (or caramel) to dip the pretzels into. I got both dark (my favorite) and milk chocolate for dipping, plus a bag of white chocolate chips for drizzle. You can absolutely make these for any occasion - these would look awesome with red and green sprinkles for Christmas, or pink hearts for Valentine's Day! 

It's definitely best to use a tall mug for dipping the pretzel rods; if you use a short mug it's hard to get enough of the pretzel covered. I poured in one and a half cups of chips and a teaspoon of vegetable oil and microwaved it in 30-second intervals, stirring in-between. Adding a little vegetable oil is an awesome trick for melting chocolate for dipping - it makes it a lot thinner. Just be careful about putting too much in because then it gets too runny and takes forever to solidify. 

Dip pretzels 1/3 to 1/2 way down the rod. I discovered that the ones dipped 1/2-way look a little prettier, but it's totally up to you (and how much chocolate you like!).

Ta da! You now have a chocolate dipped pretzel! Let the excess chocolate drip off (you can twirl the pretzel around to shake off some of the chocolate if it's too thick)

Drying the rods was the most challenging part of this whole recipe. We tried holding them upside down until they were a little more solid...and that did not work (the ends just got drippy). We tried just setting them down on foil...and they made a puddle. OBB suggested drying them on a cookie rack, which possibly could have worked, but I was afraid ours were too gooey since they had puddled on the foil. Finally I tried standing them up in a short glass, and success! You can only fit like 4 in at a time (so they don't touch each other), but it worked.

The last step is the decorating! By this point I had given up on attempting my white chocolate drizzle, and instead settled on cute Halloween sprinkles. We waited a few minutes after dipping for the chocolate to solidify a bit and then sprinkled away.

The finished product looked great! Super festive, and quite impressive :)

I filled cute black containers with candy corn, stuck the pretzels inside, and Presto - cute presentation!