Halloween Chocolate Dipped Pretzel Recipe

Chocolate dipped pretzel recipe. Learn how to make chocolate dipped pretzels!

Sometimes, life is too busy for baking. Like this past Halloween. Why? Because some people (hint hint, me) wanted to make a shark costume for Halloween, so the baking had to wait. Sadly, the appetites at Halloween-themed parties wait for no one. What's a (baker) gal to do?

This chocolate dipped pretzel recipe makes a great Halloween dessert.

How to Make Chocolate Dipped Pretzels

Chocolate-dipped pretzel recipe to the rescue! This is a very easy Halloween dessert to make. Here's what you'll need:

• 1 bag of pretzel rods
• 1 to 2 tubs of dipping chocolate. Follow the instructions to melt it.
• Halloween sprinkles (or even crushed Halloween candy) to roll them in.
• Put a cookie tray (cover with sheet of aluminum foil) in the freezer, and place pretzels on the tray as you make them.

How to make chocolate dipped pretzels? It's simple!

The hardest part of the chocolate dipped pretzel recipe above is finding a bag of pretzel rods that aren't broken (or not eating them before the party starts).

Enjoy!

BakerGal (who doesn't always bake)

P.S. BEST SHARK COSTUME EVER

Halloween Cookies: Chocolate Oatmeal No Bake Cookies

Chocolate oatmeal no bake cookies make great Halloween cookies.

They're delicious, but ugly. I decided to give this staple no bake recipe a seasonal makeover. The result? Halloween chocolate no bake cookies, one version with "Pumpkin Patch" toppers and another with "Witches' Hats."

Home bakers traditionally plop the batter for this quick-to-cook, candy-like treat onto wax paper by the spoonful and leave it to cool into unappealing blobs. Why not treat such a tasty dessert with more respect?

My revision preserves deliciousness, but leaves the cookies nicely formed and dressed up as Halloween cookies. Here's how I fixed the problem using mini cupcake pans and a few candies:
Pumpkin Patch Variation: Spray mini cupcake pans (appx 36 cupcakes worth) thoroughly with no-stick cooking spray. Working quickly, fill each cupcake tin halfway with spoonfuls of cooked batter, and press a pumpkin candy into the top of each cookie. When completely cool, remove with a butter knife.

Witches' Hat Variation: Remove the foil from about 36 Hershey's Kisses. Spray mini cupcake pans (appx 36 cupcakes worth) thoroughly with no-stick cooking spray. Working quickly, fill the trays half-way with spoonfuls of cooked batter. To keep the chocolates from melting completely, you may need to wait a minute or so before topping each cookie with a Hershey's Kiss. Don't wait too long, or the cookie will harden. When completely cool, remove the chocolate oatmeal no bake cookies with a butter knife.

This quick and easy chocolate no bake cookie recipe makes great Halloween cookies.

Check below for the chocolate no bake cookie recipe I grew up with. If you want to give the Halloween cookies a more grown-up taste, you can add up to a teaspoon of instant coffee powder to the milk and butter mixture.

Chocolate No Bake Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:
1/2 cup milk
1 stick butter or margerine, melted
2 cups sugar
1 tsp instant coffee (optional)
3 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla
3 cups quick oats (also known as 1-minute oats)

Prepare your mini cupcake pans as described above, and remove foil from any candy in advance. Combine milk, melted butter, sugar, cocoa powder, and optional instant coffee in a pan and bring to full rolling boil. Maintain full boil for 1.5 to 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla and oats, and follow directions described above for Pumpkin Patch or Witches' Hat cookies.

Hope you enjoy these chocolate oatmeal no bake cookies!

BakerGal!

How to Make Cute Owl Cupcakes

This recipe makes for some VERY cute owl cupcakes!

Whooo whooo whoooo's been baking? These owl cupcakes are adorable. I made about 4 dozen of them for a toddler's birthday party.

How to Make Owl Cupcakes

If you want to learn how to make owl cupcakes, I describe the necessary steps and decorations below. I used an owl cupcake design that I found through a Google search, but made some small changes: I used mini Oreos for the eyes, and the pupils and beak are Reese's Pieces. 

Owl cupcakes before decoration.

I started with a vanilla cupcake recipe of Magnolia Bakery fame, featured on the blog Cast Sugar. But frankly, it had a strange off-flavor to me. I'd prefer to use a standard vanilla cupcake recipe in the future. Cupcakes in hand, I slathered on some basic vanilla buttercream frosting, followed by the fun part: decorations!

Ingredients for and Assembly of an Owl Cupcake

Owl Pupils and Beaks = Reese's Pieces
It turns out that you don't have to split the candies that make the beak, as long as your frosting is deep enough to bury the lower half in.

Decoration materials for owl cupcakes.

Owl Cupcake Eyes = Mini Oreos
It's pretty tricky to avoid getting Oreo crumbs on the white part of the cookie, though heating the Oreos in the microwave makes it easier to separate the halves.

The future eyes of the owl cupcakes! 

Owl Cupcake Feathers = Sliced Almonds

Sliced almonds become feathers for the owl cupcakes.

Then, I piped some brown icing to make feathers under the beak. Voilà!

In support of fun owl cupcakes,
Baker Gal

How to Make a Frosting Rose

Even cakes want to look snazzy.

Frosting roses quickly upgrade a humble cake from "standard" to "pretty awesome." They can also add a special element to cupcakes, brownies, and other desserts.

The good news is that they aren't hard to make! The frosting roses pictured above are my first attempt at making flowers out of frosting, and I had a lot of fun in the process. Below, I provide a rough outline of how to make a frosting rose, along with some tips.

Close up of frosting roses

How to Make a Frosting Rose

So, you want to learn how to make icing roses? First, you'll need to whip up a buttercream frosting. It might sound intimidating, but it's quite straightforward. Any basic buttercream frosting that calls for butter and sugar will work. Be sure to use an electric mixer, though, unless you have Schwarzenegger arms.

To make your basic buttercream frosting a little more special, you can add a small amount of flavoring extract, such as vanilla extract, almond extract, or lemon flavoring. For the icing roses pictured above, I added about 1 teaspoon of almond extract and a small amount of pink food coloring gel. 

Now that your frosting is ready, get your equipment lined up. You'll need a rose petal decorating tip appropriate to the size of icing roses you'd like to make (A small size is 101, medium sizes are 103 and 104. There are large sizes as well). You'll also need a pastry bag and a device called a flower nail. It serves as a rotating base for the icing rose-in-progress.

Stick a little wax paper on the flower nail, fill the pastry bag, and build the base of your icing rose: start with a bud in the middle, and build inner sets of petals first, working outward. As you get used to using the pastry bag and petal tip, the icing roses will become easier to make. As you finish each icing rose, stick it in the freezer on a wax paper-lined baking sheet until you're ready to decorate the cake. For the cake above, I made my icing roses a day in advance.

 Let me know if you make any frosting roses yourself and how they turn out!

Good luck and have fun!
BakerGal