Peanut Butter Pretzel Bites

Hi everyone!  Are you ready for this week's Adventure In Baking?  This week combines what may possibly be my favorite flavor combination when I'm looking for a sweet treat.  It's crunchy, creamy, sweet and salty.  It's peanut butter, pretzels and chocolate.  And, in the spirit of full disclosure.....there isn't actually any baking.  I used a mixer.  And a cookie sheet.  But no oven.  While I was trying to figure out what to make this week, I went back to the site that inspired this whole adventure of mine ...... the blog at Baked Perfection.  And you can find the full recipe here. 

The ingredients.  Not really baking anything so no flour or baking powder.  But, there's only 6 ingredients plus whatever chocolate you want to use.

Let's get started.  Mix together the peanut butter, butter, vanilla, powdered sugar and salt.  The powdered sugar gives the whole thing an odd consistency.  It's smooth, but kinda fluffy. 

Next step.  Roll into balls and place on a pretzel; top with second pretzel.  Basically, make a bunch of miniature peanut butter sandwiches.  And I mean a bunch!

And then.  Chill in freezer for 20 minutes.

Final step.  Melt chocolate and gently dip the pretzel bites into the coating.  Place on wax paper to dry.  I have not perfected my dipping technique, but this was an improvement over the truffles I tried here.   I like adding the little drizzle of chocolate on top.  It hides the rough spots!  I only had two bites fall apart in the chocolate and they were towards the very end.  There were so many to dip, they'd been out of the freezer almost 45 minutes by the time I got to them so they weren't sticking together too well. 

Taste test.  I ran out of white chocolate and pink candy melts.  I went to my baking cabinet (baking has taken over my limited kitchen space) and the only chocolate/candy melt colors I had left were red and green.  Since I'd previously used red on the truffles, I went with green.  Not a very appealing choice. 

They taste ..... sweet.  I tried one before I dipped it in chocolate and really like it.  Kinda like a Nutter Butter cookie.  After chocolate, meh.  I ate one and had no desire for another.  Too, .......I can't put my finger on what exactly I don't like about it.  They aren't bad, just not to my taste.  They look cool all lined up though!  

The clean up.  The recipe made 56 bites.  I was afraid I was going to run out of pretzels!  Gave half away, saved some for the freezer and took the rest to work.  They were gone BEFORE we made it to morning break.  I work with a bunch of guys that will probably eat anything that's placed in front of them, but I think that's a speed record.

On the next episode of Adventures In Baking I'm doing a cookie.  I have the recipe picked out, the supplies purchased and am looking forward to trying it out.  

Keep it sweet

-Teddra