Prancing and pawing 2011

Busy day! I have no idea whose bright idea it was to go to walmart in the middle of the day on the busiest traveling day of the year, but she was stupid.

But I needed a few things before a camping trip tonight, road trip tomorrow, shopping trip on Friday, and football drooling on Saturday. I needed candy. Lots of candy.

Before I get to the cooking, check out the quick condensed last touches of the final tree decorating.

That is by far the most fun picture of the day. I’ll get more tree pictures later. Frankie is not a fan, but he looked so cute. What I’m not going to show you is the next 5 seconds after this picture. It involves a real hissy fit and Stephen in a pool of his own blood with Frankie flinging off the Santa hat and then stomping the ever loving fluff out of it.

After the near death experience, I made these. They were very quick and easy. The hardest part is peeling off the wrapper on the hugs. I won’t lie, it actually took a few minutes and it was tedious. But worth it.

Holiday Pretzel Treats

From Family Fun

• Bite-size, waffle-shaped pretzels
• Hershey’s Kiss or Hershey’s Hugs
• M&M’s candy. I used peanut M&M’s

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 200F. Set a number of bite-size, waffle-shaped pretzels (one for each treat) in a single layer on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, then top each pretzel with an unwrapped Hershey’s Kiss or Hershey’s Hug.
2. Bake for 4 to 6 minutes (the white chocolate will melt more quickly), until the chocolates begin to just melt. Remove the cookie sheet from the oven and quickly press an M&M’s candy into the center of each Kiss.
3. Allow the treats to cool for a few minutes, then place the WHOLE SHEET PAN  in the refrigerator to set, about 10 minutes. Take the pan out, transfer pretzels to cooling rack. If they are not set, put pan back in fridge. Place handfuls of the candies in clear plastic bags and tie on colorful ribbons.

Edited: I clarified to put the whole pan in the fridge to set. Because the pan will be 200* coming out of the oven, I’m assuming that is why the original recipe said to let the treats cool for a bit. You don’t want to put a pan that hot in the fridge. I did NOT move a pretzel treat off the pan until after they came out of the fridge. Once they cooled and set, they went into a plastic bowl and across two states then to school. They did not melt or break apart. Hershey’s knows how to make “stable” chocolate