Your New Favorite Party Snack
Sweet, salty, crunchy, chocolatey…. Check, check, check and check. These Candied Pretzels tick all the boxes to qualify as one of the best snacks of your life. Addictive, sweet & salty (I may have mentioned this, yes, but is there any better flavor combo? It’s worth repeating), and so, so easy. Candied Pretzels take all of 5 minutes to toss together. Then just 15 minutes of baking, which means that in well under 30 minutes you can be munching on your new favorite snack. Or walking out the door with your last-minute potluck contribution that no one needs to know was last minute. If I sound a little obsessed, it’s because I am. We’ve made candied pecans and candied walnuts here before, but candied pretzels are just a new level of snacking perfection.
Candied Pretzels: How-To
To make candied pretzels, we start by tossing a few (generous) handfuls of small & crunchy twisty pretzels in melted butter, flavored with a hint of vanilla. This is not only going to add great flavor to our finished product, it’s also going to help our cinnamon sugar coating cling to the pretzels, ensuring they all get a nice even coating. Toss your pretzels well here, and make sure they all get a thorough butter-bath! For our coating, we’re using a simple blend of sugar and cocoa powder (for a chocolatey, cocoa-sugar flavor) as well as just a pinch of ground cinnamon. We’re also adding just a touch of flaky sea salt, because even though your pretzels will already be salted, the flavor will be a little subdued by the cocoa sugar and a little extra salt goes a long way for bringing out all the best flavor. And, like I mentioned earlier, we’re going for sweet & salty here.
Don’t Forget the Chocolate!
While your candied pretzels are baking, that cinnamon/sugar/butter mixture is going to caramelize around each and every pretzel (sometimes settling in the spaces between the twists and making crunchy candied blobs — those are my favorite!). While this step alone is going to give you great tasting candied pretzels, it’s the chocolate that you add once the pretzels are out of the oven that really takes them to the next level. A quick drizzle of dark chocolate adds a surprising amount of flavor. We’re only drizzling the dark chocolate, so we’re not quite venturing into chocolate-covered-pretzel-territory, but it’s enough to make these candied pretzels feel truly, well, candied. You can use melted chocolate chips, a melted chocolate bar, or dark chocolate melting wafers (Ghirardelli are my current favorite for flavor and ease of use). The melting wafers are honestly my preference because the chocolate hardens quickly (within a matter of minutes) and isn’t as prone to re-melting in your hands as either chocolate chips or a chocolate bar would be. Whichever you choose, though, you really can’t go wrong!
I’ve made these candied pretzels well over a dozen times so far, and foresee this happening again and again this summer. Enjoy! Be sure to check out my Candied Pretzel video at the bottom of the recipe! If you enjoy watching, make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel where I’ve already uploaded over 150 recipe videos that you can watch for free!
This recipe was originally published 10/05/2016. Photos and post updated and recipe updated for clarity 06/05/2019.
