Chocolate Covered "Pumpkins"

Today we made some chocolate covered pretzels. We used small pretzel knots, dipped in white chocolate that we had colored with orange food coloring. I got this idea from this website and you can view it for a more detailed explanation of how to make these treats. She has great pictures, too!

What you need:

• Bag of pretzels
• Orange Food Coloring (I used this stuff because it's awesome)
• White Chocolate Chips (we bought a small Nestle bag)
• M&Ms (just the green ones)
• Oil and/or Butter

Melt your chocolate. I did 1 minute in the microwave and then another 30 seconds until it seemed ready. Don't go too fast or try to melt it all in one go, it won't work! Add some food coloring until you achieve the shade of orange you want. I added some butter and oil to my chocolate to thin it out. The original recipe states that you should use 1 Tbsp of shortening for about 10 oz of chocolate. I estimated and just added until I felt that the chocolate was runny enough. The reason I didn't use shortening is because we don't buy that stuff in our house! I had fine results. The chocolate could have maybe been a bit smoother had I used shortening, but it looks good to my 3-year old and that is all that really matters to me!

Dip the pretzels in the chocolate, lay them out on a cookie sheet and stick a green M&M in the top for a "stem." I let my boy do this part. He had great fun trying to get the M&M to stand up right. He put them wherever he wanted, which was fine with me, but ideally you would want them in the bend at the top of the pretzel to look most like a pumpkin.

If you accidentally overheat your chocolate, you may be able to save it by using these tips.

Another great thing about this activity is you can teach your child at the same time! While I worked on melting the chocolate, etc. my son sorted the M&Ms by color! He chose to eat the brown ones when we were all done!

Thanks, Butter With A Side of Bread!!!