I was browsing Google+ the other day and saw these darling Alien Pretzels. Only they were called something different and I honestly couldn’t ever find the post I originally saw. I tried Googling the heck out of it (Martian pretzels? Cute little green dude pretzels?) and never found it. So I re-created it on my own and they turned out so cute! I would love to credit whoever came up with this idea…Kraft? I can’t find it anywhere. At any rate- here are my instructions- make them, they’re so easy and so fun. And slightly creepy.
- 1 bag mini pretzels {you won’t use the whole bag, only about 1/4}
- circular candies- I used these little pearls, but you can use Sixlets or any other type of round decoration
- green & orange food coloring, I used about 1/8th tsp of Wilton’s gel colors
- 1 bag White Chocolate chips, divided and melted slowly {directions below}
- 1 TBSP shortening, to thin out chocolate
- semi-sweet chocolate chips, for decorating the alien eyes (you’ll only need about 3-4 TBSP
First step is to melt the chocolate. I put 1/3 of the bag of white chocolate chips into 1 small glass bowl, another third into a separate glass bowl then put about 4 TBSP into a small ziplock bag, to use for decorating later on. Before you even put it in the microwave, add about 1/2 TBSP shortening. You need to thin out the chocolate prior to dunking the pretzels or else the chocolate will be so thick you won’t even be able to tell it’s a pretzel under there! Shortening is the ONLY thing that will do this- don’t add water, butter, etc.
Go slowly! White chocolate seizes easily, and you don’t want to coat your pretzels with grainy chocolate, right? Go slowly and stir minimally. I put mine on for 1 minute, stirred gently, then put it in for an additional 30 seconds. When I took it out, the chocolate still looked solid. It wasn’t! I added green food coloring to one bowl of chocolate, then left the other white. Stir gently, until it’s nice and smooth. These 2 bowls of chocolate are what you’ll use to coat your pretzels.
I’ve tested out a few ways to coat pretzels in chocolate and none of them really work as well as simply using your fingers. So that’s what I do! As you dip the pretzels, try and have the bottom hole of the pretzel stay empty- this is what makes the mouth of the alien and you want it to be open! I used a toothpick and just sort of poked it in as I was holding the coated pretzel to open it back up (if the chocolate coated it closed.)
Once you’ve coated the pretzels, lay them on a sheet of parchment to cool and dry. While they cool, you can start decorating. Put about 3-4 TBSP of the semi-sweet chocolate in a small ziplock bag and melt that in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Do the same for a small amount of the white chocolate. I did even another small bag of the white chocolate and put orange food coloring in it!
***I’m going to put another shameless plug for Chocoley Chocolate products– the white drizzling chocolate and dark drizzling chocolate in the squeeze bottles works amazing for these treats! It melts so fast and they taste fabulous. {No I don’t work for them but yes they have amazing stuff!} Moderately priced and if you subscribe to their email list, they send out discount coupons all the time!}***
Once you’ve got your decorating chocolate melted I liked to fill the 2 top holes of the pretzels with either the melted semi-sweet chocolate. Fill them all the way up but not overflowing. Then you can add a pearl candy and even an additional dab of orange chocolate on top to make the eyes look extra creepy. Get creative and have fun with it!
This little guy didn’t get coated really well so I put some green chocolate in a baggie and snipped the end and tried to coat him better. It turned out looking cute!