Snowman cookies – Pretzel covered with chocolate

Everything started from Luca’s bake sale at school: once a year every class is in charge of the monthly school fund raising bake sale. For those who are not used to bake sales (in Italy we do not organize them) this is more or less how it works: when you go to pick up your little one you find a nice table at the school entrance loaded with sweets that you can buy with a very kind volunteer parent in charge of the table happily smiling at you.  Usually you go inside, pick up your happy little one and on the way out you stop at the table and let him/her choose one sweet. The raised money goes to buy something for the school and the sweets are kindly offered (either baked or bought) by the parents of one class. January was our bake sale turn and I have to admit that I spent few evenings surfing on Pinterest to find something visually appealing for the kids, easy to wrap for the sale (cupcakes are very tricky to individually pack…) and not too difficult to prepare. That’s how I ended up preparing 36 snowman pretzel cookies 😉

The cookies came out so cute that I couldn’t not share with you the recipe.

Here you are what you need to prepare 36 snowman pretzel cookies:

And that’s how to proceed:

– microwave the white candy melts for 1 minute in a glass or ceramic container that is as high as the pretzel sticks. Stir until smooth and completely melted. If you do not find candy melts you can use white chocolate and melt it in the same way. You might need more time. You can start with 1 minute in the microwave and keep going 20 seconds at the time up until the chocolate will be completely melted and smooth. Be careful because the container will get hot!

– take one pretzel stick and immerge it in the white chocolate for 3/4. Place it on a parchment paper. Coat another pretzel stick for 3/4 and place it next to the first one. Add other 6 sticks for a total of 8 sticks. Your first snowman face is formed. Keep coating the pretzels and placing them one next to the other forming as many faces as you need.

– let the white chocolate dry for 30 minutes at room temperature or 15 minutes in the refrigerator

– you have enough time to prepare the snowman noses. Melt the orange candy melts in the microwave as you did with the white ones. Place the melted orange chocolate in a small plastic bag (or in a pastry chef bag). Cut a corner of the plastic bag in order to create a tiny hole. On a parchment paper design 36 tiny long triangles. Fill the center of each triangle with the orange chocolate. If needed, you can use a toothpick to spread the chocolate in the center of the triangle. Let the orange noses dry for 20 minutes.

– Microwave the brown candy melts in a large glass or ceramic container. Take one white chocolate pretzels square and dip it on the side that is not coated in white. We are creating the snowman hat. Place the pretzel square back on the parchment paper to dry. Keep dipping the white squares in the dark chocolate.

– Take one pretzel stick and immerge it completely in the dark chocolate with the help of a fork. Place the dark chocolate pretzel on the snowman exactly on the border of the white and the brown. We are creating the snowman hat’s brim. Let it dry.

– Remove one orange nose from the parchment paper. Place a drop of dark melted chocolate on the back using a toothpick and gently place it on the snowman white face.

– Using a toothpick create the snowman eyes and mouth with the dark melted chocolate.

– Final decoration: add a sugar snowflake flower on the hat. Use the dark chocolate as a glue.

– Let the snowman cookies dry completely for two hours and store them at room temperature.

Enjoy!!