Life Updates & Sweet/Salty Treats

Chris's mom was transferred to a rehabilitation center in Ann Arbor Monday afternoon. Once she's built up her strength with physical and occupational therapy, they will schedule her valve replacement surgery. Keep those prayers coming. This has been a long month of hospitalizations and worries. She's so ready to be home again.

Chris did find out that his job and school placements will be changing. I won't bore you with the details, but he's just thankful that he STILL has a social work job in a school district that he loves.

Now, onto some sweet treats because we all need some pick-me-ups right now!!!

Call me weird, but I don't have a sweet tooth. Instead, I crave anything that has salt. Selfishly, I wanted to make a Christmas treat that I enjoy, so the girls helped me make chocolate covered pretzel rods this past weekend.

One of the cool things about this treat, is that you can customize them according to tastes and holidays with different colored toppings.

Supplies:

Pretzel rods (word to the wise...be sure to look over the bag to make sure they aren't all broken before you leave the store or you will have to go back and buy MORE)
White chocolate chips
Dark chocolate chips
Cookie sprinkles and/or crushed peppermint candy
Waxed paper and/or baking rack



General Instructions:

When melting the chocolate, melt 1 c. chocolate chips (or white chocolate chips) with 1-2 tsp. SHORTENING or vegetable oil. You can melt in the microwave or on the stove top, but be sure to stir constantly.

Coat your pretzel about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way down. I rolled the pretzel rod between my fingers. I had thought I'd let the girls help me with this part, but I was worried about Josie and the temperature of the melted chocolate. I suppose I could have transferred the hot melted chocolate into a cool mug. Oh well.

Transfer chocolate covered pretzels onto baking rack or waxed paper and cover them with sprinkles.

If you want to drizzle chocolate onto them, let them dry completely or the chocolate will melt into each other. I failed to do this. Oops. They tasted good anyways.

To speed up the drying process (honestly we wanted them for dessert with our dinner) I stuck our pretzel rods in the freezer.



After they had completely hardened, we placed them in cellophane treat bags and tied each one with holiday ribbon and a tiny ornament.

In a few days, I'll be posting a recipe to make personalized hot cocoa. Emma is giving them to her friends and they turned out really cute. In case you are wondering, I do cram in several crafts each weekend. Don't even ask me about the mess I create each Saturday morning. Our best crafting sometimes happens in our pjs.