Sweet and Salty Satiation
As I've rambled on about in a couple of posts now I have lately had a desire for things that are both sweet and salty. I've tried the Vosges Barcelona bar and the Choxie Peanut Butter Pretzel bar with great success and the Hershey's Sweet and Salty Granola bar with somewhat less success. After the three of them I was left still wanting something else. I loved the pretzels in them and in a random Take 5 I grabbed at the gas station before heading for Cinci but I wanted something that was substantial and not overly sweet. I took a look at some chocolate covered pretzels at the store but wasn't thrilled with either the brand or the price and found myself wondering why you couldn't get chocolate covered pretzels made with good chocolate for a reasonable price. It's not like pretzels are all that expensive and as long as they don't double the pretzel's mass with chocolate that shouldn't add too much to the price either. Heck, I thought to myself, I could make these for nothing.
Ah, epiphany.
I grabbed a $2 bag of pretzel rods and a half pound of El Rey Gran Saman at Whole Foods. My only chocies for bulk (I.e. not in the box - I won't touch those little boxes of Scharffen Berger - they are crazy expensivo and I can get bulk online for a LOT less) are really Callebaut at Wild Oats (which is a bit of a drive), Ghirdelli at Trader Joes (which is acceptable I suppose), and El Rey (which is very nice). I really like the El Rey and Whole Foods is slightly more convenient for me so it was a simple choice. So, with my bounty of salty pretzel and bittersweet chocolate (and treats for the rabbit) I headed home.
So I fire up the tempering machine (even though it probably wasn't necessary to temper the chocolate), toss in my chocolate and set to sorting my pretzels. All of the broken ones were set aside for random munching at a later time. All of the whole rods were gathered close at hand for coating. I put down a sheet of parchment paper and spread out a few pretzel rods to act as a cooling rack and I was ready to go. About 45 minutes later I'm sitting on top of a huge stack of ugly chocolate-coated pretzel sticks! I didn't bother coating with nuts for some unknown reason (I need to coat them with nuts next time - gotta remember that) and in retrospect I should have gone with the Bucare 58% instead of the Gran Saman but the end product is darn tasty and a pretty good bargain for the yield.
Bag of Pretzel Rods: $2.00
~1/2 lb El Rey Gran Saman: $4.00
How's that for a nice cheap pile of sweet and salty pretzel goodness? And I used expensive chocolate – I can get Ghirardelli for $3.50 a pound, which would go a long way to cheapening this. And adding nuts to the equation won't raise the price a whole lot (so long as you don't utterly bury them in nuts). If you want to get really fancy shmancy you could dip them in caramel or peanut butter before you coat with chocolate. It's a great quick little project. It’s cheap, relatively easy, and not even very messy. It’s also a fun one to do with the kids. My sister did regular sized pretzels with my nephews and they had a blast and turned out some great snackage.
It’s amazing the quality of snacky stuff one can turn out in little to no time and at a fraction of what a similar product would cost elsewhere.
Comments
cybele Said:
I make chocolate covered pretzels quite often. It's a great use for leftover chocolate bits (from dipping strawberries of other candy projects).
I prefer the mini pretzels - they're easy to pop in your mouth whole so there are less crumbs.
I usually use Wilbur buds which are only 50% cocoa solids - but they have a lot of cocoa butter in them so they balance out the crisp of the pretzels really well.
Posted by: cybele | June 21, 2006 2:27 PM
William Said:
Mini pretzels are great but I'm fond of big crunchy pretzels so I immediately went for the rods. Plus one rod makes a nice serving size (built in portion control!). I'd probably just keep on eating the mini pretzles until they were all gone.
I haven't gotten to play with the Wilbur buds yet. I might order some this fall (after this heat is gone) and try playing with them. There is a lot of stuff I want to order this fall and this is just one of the many on the list.
Posted by: William | June 21, 2006 3:14 PM