When I saw this recipe on Pinterest, I immediately pinned it to my dessert board (and drooled) because I have a soft spot for anything combining pretzels with caramel and chocolate. My first attempt at this recipe was in honor of my friend Ashley’s Birthday. I knew that she’d love it since she loves Pretzel M&Ms. Ashley dug into the bark at work and was immediately swarmed by any and all employees within the radius of how far the exclamation of “OHMYGOD THIS IS DELICIOUS” could be heard. I made another batch for ladies night where, one by one, each of the ladies pushed the plate away declaring the treat as problematically addicting.
The original recipe on Pinterest was linked to the blog, The Legume Loyalist, where you can see the original recipe, but since my first attempt was a little sticky (literally), I have provided my recipe below with some of my tips and lessons learned.
Salted Chocolate Caramel Pretzel Bark as I made it
Ingredients
- 1 cup (2 sticks) of butter, plus an extra pat for greasing
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- Mini pretzels* (about half of an average sized bag)
- 12-oz bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli)
- sea salt*
Directions
- Wrap a flat baking sheet with foil. The sheet should ideally have an edge.
- Use a pat of butter to grease the foil. If you don’t do this, you will be annoyed later.
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
- Place an even layer of pretzels over the greased foil
- Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat
- Stir the sugar into the melted butter. Allow the sugar and butter to simmer and bubble over low to medium heat. It will take a 5-8 minutes to simmer and stir the mixture into caramel. For a test, dip a clean utensil into the mixture and see if it cools into a tacky caramel.
- Pour the caramel mixture over the pretzels. Use a spatula to spread the caramel as even as possible, but it is okay if it is not perfectly even or completely at the edge.
- Put the tray into the oven and bake for 5 minutes. This will cause the caramel to spread evenly. After the 5 minutes, take the tray out and put it to the side.
- While the pretzels and caramel are baking, set up a double boiler. If you do not own an actual double boiler: place a heatproof bowl over a sauce pan containing 2″ of boiling water.
- Pour the bag of chocolate chips into the top bowl and stir constantly as they melt. Once melted, quickly pour and spread the mixture over the caramel-pretzel mixture.
- Before the chocolate has set, sprinkle sea salt over the top.
- Place the bark in the fridge for at least an hour to cool and harden.
- Once hardened, use your hands to break the bark into smaller pieces. I found the process easier if I covered my hands with plastic baggies to avoid sticky-melty factor. (makes 1 cookie sheet sized batch of bark)
. We compared notes and it turns out that there were some similar themes, one of which was to eat food in its most natural form (read: no chemicals, no low-fat, and no manufactured ingredients that you cannot pronounce). It is true that our food is largely (and increasingly) manufactured and it appears that this may correlate to how unhealthy Americans have become the last 50+ years. My personal opinion is that these two variables are absolutely directly related, but I am not a scientist and I’m not legally allowed to pretend to be one. Both of our books were against using the most common oils (vegetable, canola, corn, soybean and cottonseed) and recommended using only olive oil, butter, ghee, coconut oil, and macadamia oil. The later three are best for cooking due to their stability at higher temperatures.