Fun Food: Pretzel Mini Peanut Butter Cup Hearts

Another effort to make a fun (and very easy) treat for the early morning visitors.  This time I took our plastic barrel of small pretzels, put 30 of the pretzels onto a parchment covered cookie sheet, topped the pretzels with an upside-down mini peanut butter cup, and put into the preheated 350 degree F. oven for 4 minutes.

Mini peanut butter cups on bottom pretzel ready for oven.

When the 4 minutes  had passed,  I pulled out the cookie sheet and topped each softened peanut butter cup with many-colored sprinkles.  Finally I smushed one more mini pretzel on top (lined up in the same direction as the bottom pretzel) so that the chocolate more or less came through the holes in the tops of the pretzels.  After setting them in the refrigerator for fifteen minutes they were ready to eat.  Very cute, I thought.

Pretzel hearts with sprinkles, ready to eat

As it happens, though I thought these were adorable but they did not appeal.  Oh, well.  Another day.  Another food failure. 

Well, maybe chocolate at 6 AM is not what is needed.  I will try apples and bananas and see what happens then.  Or muffins again.

Food Friday: Pitiful (Nevertheless Cute) Reindeer Cookies

Somewhere online I saw some adorable reindeer cookies.  I decided to try them for early morning food.  This is how I proceeded:

Measured 2 cups chocolate chips and 1 Tablespoon coconut oil into a glass measuring cup.  Microwaved for 30 seconds, removed from microwave to stir, returned for 30 more seconds, stirred again.  They were nicely melted.  Your microwave might take longer.  Check EVERY 30 seconds or you will burn the chocolate.

Opened a package of sandwich cookies that I had found at the Dollar Tree. Dropped the cookies one at a time into the melted chocolate then turned over and lifted out with salad tonge and laid on a parchment-paper-lined pan.  After getting a dozen or so of them coated with chocolate I laid two small pretzel knots on top of the individual cookies, covered with a piece of parchment paper and a large storage container to weight down the paper.  It was my view that doing this would keep the "horns" happily in place on the cookies while the chocolate cooled.

Because it was below freezing outside, I put the pan on a table on the front porch for a few minutes. In the meantime I went through a container of M and M's, both plain and peanut, to find whites for the eyes and reds for the Rudolph noses.

By that time the cookies on the porch were solid!  Bringing them inside, I flipped them over so the "horns" were on the bottom.  I poured more melted chocolate on top of the top/face of the cookies then placed the eyes and nose.  It would have been good to use some sort of grabber or tongs for this job.  OH!  As I am thinking of this now, I should have found the sugar tongs my brother brought home from France where he served as a missionary decades ago.  They would have been perfect for this job.

Well, as you can see, precision is NOT my middle name.  However, I do think they look rather cute.  If you make them, they will be wonderful.

Even with the pitiful appearance, they are edible.  In fact, so edible that I removed leftovers to drop off with the local grandchildren so I would not inadvertently eat one.  Or two.  Or more.  (Have you ever noticed that if you have a treat in your house that is highly visible it is almost impossible to walk by without reaching out to it?  It is better to have a bowl of lovely kale salad sitting on the counter with a clear top on it.)

Perhaps the next reindeer food item will be more attractive.  There IS another one in the wings....