Halloween Spooky Eye Pretzel Bark

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

With so many fun things I came across this season I had a hard time deciding what to make! I sent cookies for the kids to eat in Trevor's class. But I wanted to send them all home with a little something.

When I found the Spooky Eyes Pretzel Bark on Cookies and Cups website I thought it would be perfect and very simple! I was right about perfect, but WRONG about simple. LOL.

Very few ingredients which seemed simple. You take pretzels and lay them out on a cookie sheet.

Then you combine butter and brown sugar and bring to boil for 2 minutes.

This is where I went wrong.

And the reason why I had to go for try #2 with this recipe. I didn't boil long enough....and the sugar didn't dissolve leaving it sticky when it was all said and done. I thought that might have been the problem, but wrote Shelly about her recipe. She said the 2 minutes should start AFTER the sugar was dissolved. OH....me not being the best baker didn't think about this when I was making it...that information would have been helpful. But I'm not quite sure how to tell when the sugar was dissolved in the first place.

If anyone wants to write me and let me know - I'd love that information! I didn't want to boil it too long for fear it might burn and get too sticky to pour out.

Once you have this step all perfected (on my 2nd try I did okay!), you pour this over the pretzels and bake for 10 min.
Then melt white chocolate and pour over that. And do the same with a layer of milk chocolate. I doubled the milk chocolate to have enough to spread over.

Then you can garnish with pretty much anything you want!!! For the Halloween effect I liked what Cookies and Cups did for the Spooky eyes - using oreos. Here is the "Bark" before it's all in pieces. I have to say breaking the bark was not easy....It would be ideal for every piece to have an oreo with eyes...but I didn't exactly know how to make that happen. Any ideas there?

Here's a side view of the bark.


Hope the kids like this creation...turned out to be more of something I wanted to tackle since I didn't get it right the first time. I was even prepared to have to try for attempt 3. Luckily I didn't have to!


HAPPY HALLOWEEN.
And HAPPY BAKING.

A Bit of Gold along with some Spring-pillars

I look at some many cool cookie blogs each week - get their updates automatcallly just like you might get mine. I never read many blogs before I started baking cookies and it's so fun to see what the real "experts" are up to and try to copy/borrow ideas from them!

I was once again inspired by some favorite blogs of mine to branch out and try new things! I wish I had such great ideas like so many people come up with!

I also tried a new chocolate cookie recipe so we'll see what the testers think how they turned out this week. I wanted more of a chocolate taste unlike last time. I like strong flavors and not just a hint.

I need to thank Cookie Crazie for this idea below. She calls them her Spring-pillars. When I saw them I thought they were so cute and just had to try them. They were really fun to make. I just cut out several circles and "smooshed" them together. For the head with antennas I actually used a bunny head and reshaped the ears. I thought they turned out pretty good!


Here was another out of the box idea I saw this week and I jumped on trying it because it looked so fun! This cookie was made with 3 different cookie cutters put together. A big circle, a small circle and a small flower. Cut them all out and "smooshed" them together to get the rainbow and pot of gold below. Pretty cool, huh?




Here's the finished product! This was inspired by The Sweet Adventures of SugarBelle. Everyone can use a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, right?



I really liked the gold sprinkles I found that look like gold. Think I found the right touch for these!

Just a few more to finish up for St. Pat's Day! I'm hoping to find my pot of gold some day!