Pretzel Sticks...

Doesn't everybody have a Mom that made so many Christmas cookies when they were growing up that you kind of just "learned" the recipes from watching and doing? I hope so- because that is one of the things you can't pick up later on without a lot of effort or money for cooking classes. My kids are well on their way to making some things when they get older, including my zucchini bread- I make that almost every week it seems...and I promise to post the recipe this week. Good stuff. Healthy too!
So, being raised in a home where my mom stayed home and gardened and sewed and made big meals with company over every Sunday and where we had fresh-baked after-school snacks almost everyday, I didn't realize that this wasn't happening to every other kid in America. I just took it as "normal" and accepted that this is how life was. Now that I'm grown and I've watched reruns of 'Leave It to Beaver', I've learned I was one lucky kid. Make that one of five lucky kids.
Now my biggest challenge in life is living up to the kind of example my mom was to me and trying to turn that around and become the same thing for my own kids. That's one of the reasons I bake and make stuff and sing around the house... I'm hoping a little bit of it will rub off on my kids so that they will feel lucky when they grow up and look back. Only they will be watching reruns of Malcom in the Middle or Everybody Loves Raymond.
That was a long intro just to say "Here's how you make sprinkled pretzels." You go out and buy the packaged blocks of almond bark. I got mine at Wal-Mart...they come in chocolate and vanilla. You break the blocks into smaller pieces and melt them over low heat in a saucepan for about 8-10 min. You want the chocolate to be fairly thin...that it will drip from a spoon of pretzel stick. Next, coat your pretzel sticks or other pretzel shapes in the almond bark and then lay them on a sheet of parchment or wax paper to harden just a bit. Sprinkle with candy pieces, or melt some of the opposite color chocolate (ie. white on dark chocolate or dark on white) and drizzle back and forth across your pretzels. You can do these with crushed nuts or m&m's or probably a hundred different candies. It's that easy! Maybe I will start posting a recipe of the week. I think you'd all love my {easy!} Baked Caramel French Toast too. Yum. Might have to make that this week...I'm making myself hungry.