Soft Pretzel Sunday

Tags

baking with kids, cooking with kids, food, foodie, postaday2011, pretzels, recipe, snack, soft pretzel, vegetarian

One of the things I miss about home, fresh soft pretzels.
One of the things I miss in my everyday life,  cooking & baking with Pumpkin.
With  the demands of our schedules, we don’t get to spend a lot of mother-son time alone… Today I got him into the kitchen to bake soft pretzels with me. He did most of the work, from measuring ingredients to mixing. I showed him how to knead the dough and let him take over, showed him how to roll and shape the pretzels and let him play…

Soft Pretzel Sunday

This recipe was modified from one we found in a cook book a while back (it was copied on a piece of paper, so I’m not exactly sure of the origin).

Ingredients:
2 tsp. dry yeast, 1 1/2 c. warm water, 2 1/2 tsp. sugar, 1 tsp. fresh ground sea salt, extra salt for sprinkling, 3 1/2 c. flour, 1 egg

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425°F. Place yeast in bowl and cover with water, stir until dissolved. Let sit for 5 minutes. In separate bowl mix together flour, sugar and salt. Slowly add flour mixture to yeast, stirring until smooth. Knead dough on lightly floured surface for about 4 minutes. Cut dough into 15 pieces. Roll each piece of dough into about a 12″ rope and twist into a pretzel . Beat egg and brush over tops of pretzels, sprinkle with sea salt. Place pretzels on greased baking trays. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

I wanted to sprinkle some with sesame seeds and some with poppy seeds. Pumpkin vetoed the idea, but agreed to be more creative next time we make pretzels together. Serve with spicy brown mustard.

We sit around the tables for meals, but not usually for snacks… boy did this change today. The three of us sat around the table gobbling the pretzels like vultures. Pumpkin was really proud of how they turned out. He should be, they turned out fantastic.

What have you baked/cooked recently with a child in your life?

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Chocolate Covered Pirouettes & Pretzels Rods

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back up plan, Candy, cookie, cookies, dessert, luncheon, party snack, pot luck, pretzels, snack

When All Else Fails

There are good days and there are bad days. Then there are perfect days and epically bad days… Yesterday, was the latter…

I’m still not feeling 100% and today is our holiday luncheon at work… I like to make tasty and beautiful desserts.

Plan #1
Make a butter rum pound cake topped with dark chocolate ganache and garnished with crushed peppermints… I only have half the ingredients I needed… and I didn’t have time (or energy) to run out to the store…

Plan #2
I had planned to make an almond angel food cake with chocolate ganache… I’ve made it many times before. I was whipping my egg whites and soft peaks had formed, but I wasn’t getting the stiff peaks I needs before I added my flour mixture. My metal bowl was completely grease-free… yet still no stiff peaks… Then I went for my bundt pan… ah, it’s in storage. I quickly grab my baby bundt pan and attempt to make mini angel food cakes. I couldn’t figure out the timing, and teh texture of the cake was all wrong.

Plan #3
Melt dark chocolate in double boiler and dip in pretzel rods & pirouette cookies. Easy? Normally yes, but my double boiler is also in storage… So I have to place my small sauce pan in my larger one, keeping it balanced with my left hand… if it were to tip and get a drop of water in the chocolate, it would be ruined… Once chocolate hardened I placed the chocolate dipped pirouettes (I had chocolate pirouettes and vanilla) and chocolate dipped pretzel rods in a glass bowl… and headed to bed.

Chocolate Dipped Pirouettes & Pretzel Rods

Normally, I’d make these a little more gourmet by sprinkling with crushed pistachios or drizzling stripes on with white chocolate… but tonight it was the perfect balance or sweet and salty and easy…

Here’s to today being a better day…

Chocolate Topped Pretzels

Tags

Candy, chocolate, chocolate pretzels, pretzels, shower favors, snack

My BFF’s baby shower was a few weekends ago, and I made all the food. There were about 60 people at the shower and I had great reviews on everything I made. I forgot to take pictures of all the food until it was too late. Over the next few days, I’ll share a few of the things I made.

I got the idea of these chocolate topped pretzels from my other BFF’s sister (she made them for the last shower).

Chocolate Topped Pretzels

I started with small pretzel square and placed a vanilla wafer on each of them, I used orchid, light blue and light green. Then I microwaved them for 2 minutes on full power. I pressed a chocolate candy (I used green and blue dark chocolate M&M’s) into the melted chocolate and placed into the fridge until it was hardened.

These are the perfect balance of sweet and salty. Mmm, thanks for the idea Ashley.