Looking for an easy food gift to give this year? Growing up we always made these Chocolate-dipped Pretzels as a homemade holiday gift and delivered them to family and friends. Its fun to make these with your family and have an assembly line to dip and decorate. I like to package them in holiday tins where they will stay fresh for a while. Most grocery stores sell the holiday themed pretzels which I like to dip and you could easily dip pretzel rods as well. You could even skip the pretzels entirely and dip shortbread cookies instead.

Tips for Chocolate-dipped Pretzels:

Pick the right chocolate:

There are so many options of chocolate to melt: real chocolate, chocolate chips, or candy melting disks. If you use chocolate baking bars or a block of chocolate you can temper if it contains real cocoa butter mass and cocoa solids. Chocolate chips are a fast way to dip treats but they don’t contain as much cocoa butter as real chocolate so you don’t need to temper them. Candy melting disks are the fastest and easiest option, however, they are not 100% real chocolate and they mostly contain sugar, palm oil and artificial ingredients and do not taste as good as real chocolate. To make chocolate shiny for smooth dipping you can add tiny bit of canola oil to the chocolate, but do not add any oil to the candy melting disks.

Methods for melting:

There are also several melting methods: 1. Melt over double broiler by melting half the chocolate in a glass bowl over a pot of simmering water that is not touching the water, until the chocolate reaches 115-120 degrees (dark chocolate) and 105-110 degrees (milk or white chocolate) and then remove from heat and stir in remainder of chocolate until smooth. 2. Melt in the microwave by placing one third of chocolate into a glass bowl and microwave for 30-seconds. Then add an additional third of the chocolate and continue to melt in 30-second increments until it is all melted and smooth. Remove from microwave and add in final third of the chips. 3. Melt in a electric chocolate melting pot.

How to color white chocolate:

There are candy melting disks that are already pre-colored, however, these are not real white chocolate. They are made of primarily of oil and sugar and do not taste as good as real white chocolate. I make my own colored white chocolate. When coloring your own chocolate you must either use oil-based candy coloring or to use the gel food coloring you already have, you will need the addition of a product called “flo coat.” To do this: add 5 drops of flo coat to the melted chocolate and then add 1 drop of regular gel paste color. My favorite brand of food color to use is Americolor.