Chocolate Covered Pretzels - Recipe!

So, today was one of my very good friends from work's last days in our office, before she moves to London to start a new life and career. I'm very pleased for her as it's a wonderful opportunity, but I'm really going to miss her around here! 

Anyway, I bake for the office quite a lot and have done a couple of bakesales for charity too, baking for such a big office can be quite a challenge, so I sometimes stick to traybakes and easy treat. One of the easiest and most popular things I like to make is chocolate covered pretzels.

I don't actually make the pretzels, I buy them in the supermarket, I also buy the chocolate there, I just use supermarket own brand. If I'm making these for work I usually need to make at least 50 in different variations as some people don't like milk chocolate (WEIRDOS!) and some people don't like white chocolate (me!)

This really is one of the easiest recipes ever, but everyone will LOVE these.

RECIPE

To make 50 large chocolate covered pretzels;

Ingredients Needed

• 3-4 bags of large salted pretzels (I only use whole pretzels so end up with all the broken bits left over to munch on myself)
• 5 bars of milk chocolate, 
• 5 bars of white chocolate 
• a couple of bars of plain chocolate (mostly for decoration)
• a couple of different kinds of sprinkles to decorate

Equipment Needed

• kettle (for boiling water- duh)
• medium pot (if melting chocolate on the stove)
• 2-3 large plastic mixing bowls (if you have them, if not you can clean after each choc type is used)
• spoon for mixing
• fork for lifting pretzels
• baking paper/ greaseproof paper
• LOTS of counter/ table space to set them out on

Method

Lay sheets of the baking/ greaseproof paper down on you counter tops or a table

Melt the chocolate either on the stove (as I always do) or in the microwave (if you are brave enough! I always burn it :( ) Once the chocolate is totally melted and runny you can start to dip the pretzels!

Dip either half of each pretzel into the chocolate or the whole thing, shake it to get off any excess and lay each one down on the baking/greaseproof paper, leaveing a little space around it so they dont stick together

once you have a sheet full, sprinkle whatever decorations you fancy over the top while the chocolate is still runny, you could also splatter lines of a different type of chocolate over them - this usually looks pretty good

just keep dipping, laying and sprinkling until you run out of pretzels, chocolate or space! then leave the pretzels to cool and dry. 

Once cool/ dry store in an airtight container, they should be ok for a couple of days but probably won't last that long, mine never do!

If you have any comments/ questions let me know below!

Hope you enjoy making them!

Bon Voyage, good luck and cheerybye Karen! ;) xx

I Bought my Dress!!!

Massive news!

My little sister is home from her adventures in Africa so took her to a bridal appointment last Saturday to show her a dress I really loved, while we were there I spotted something else.... something gorgeous and beautiful and wonderful hiding on the rail... MY DRESS.

The dress I like before is forgotten, it doesn't even compare!I tried 'the' dress on and Zara and I couldn't stop smiling.

I always thought the whole 'You'll know when you see it' or 'When you know, you know' thing was a bit of a cliché but maybe not!

I think the truth is, every girl when they hear the words 'wedding dress' they have a certain image in their mind, even subconsciously, and that is 'the one'.

when I imagine a wedding dress or doodle one with out thinking, it's 'my' dress.

I know its early but I really think I know, and Sarah says if I doubt myself she'll tell me I've done the right thing very day until the wedding :)

(I will obviously share more details and pics after the wedding, a long time to wait, but I'm superstitious!)

Lx

Valentines Weekend

So this Valentines day was our 11th together. ELEVENTH!

But it was actually the first time we hadn't spent the whole day together (yes, even when we should have been in school!) But we were both off at the weekend so we celebrated more then - lots of yummy food and watching movies in front of the fire :)

I baked this cake to bring into work,

and this smaller one ust for Ross, they were chocolate with a cream cheese frosting and I hand cut the hearts from red icing.

And I put this banana in his lunch

have you ever done this to a banana? You ust score into its skin slightly with a blunt pin or pen and whatever you write will turn brown during the day without effecting the banana inside! I've been doing this to all his bananas for a couple of weeks now, it's funny :)

I also made Ross these key charms out of Shrinkles (remember those?! - so fun!)

And Ross bought me these gorgeous tulips and made me this beautiful card :)

We had our traditional steak dinner on Valentines night then made pizza's for dinner on Saturday night and an Indian on Sunday, can you tell we love food??

Hope you all had a great Valentines and weekend too! Lx

Flippin' pancakes

Last Tuesday was pancake day and I had pancakes for breakfast... and dinner...

I had a pancake with fresh strawberries, whipped cream and maple syrup (mmmmmmmmm) in the canteen in work, then that evening I made crepes at home and we had them with Nutella and marshmallows or lemon and sugar :)