Deliciousness: Peanut Butter Chocolate Pretzel Sandwiches

Saw these on Pinterest the other day and was practically forced to buy pretzels the very next time I went to the grocery store. They're basically teeny tiny pretzel sandwiches, stuffed with super sweetened peanut butter and dipped in chocolate. You can find the original recipe over at Elissa's blog, 17 and Baking. Apparently these were born out of an epic fail to make something else, and the sheer desperation to make something sweet, dammit, drove her to make something quick and easy. (Note to Elissa: I'm kinda glad that pear clafoutis didn't turn out, because these sounded way better, anyway!)

I'll be attending a baby shower at one of my LYSs on Saturday. Whenever there's an event like this going on over there, it's always sort of heavily hinted that perhaps I might like to bring something? (Let me tell you, it's not like they have to twist my arm!) I knew there would already be cake, so I decided to make my treat a salty-sweet-crunchy snack instead of opting for one of the so-much-sugar-you'll-keel-over confections I usually arrive with.

These aren't going to make it over there.

Fair warning, here. These are stupid easy to make and dangerously delicious. I told the Dr. we'd try one each, just to see how they were, but that I was going to take the rest of them to the shower. Half an hour later, they were almost all gone. I'd decided to dip half of my batch in semi-sweet chocolate, and the other half in white chocolate, and while I fully expected to like the semi-sweet the best (one of my LYS owners is allergic to chocolate so the white ones were meant for her), the white chocolate was both my and the Dr.'s favorite. I have no idea why; I don't usually like white chocolate but something about it just goes really well with the peanut butter mixture.

Other than the white chocolate switch, I did a couple of other things different, too. First, I froze the sandwiches solid before dipping them in chocolate. Since the recipe makes a huge batch, the last few sandwiches were starting to thaw out and get rather sticky by the time I got to them, so I might suggest pulling them out just a few at a time for the chocolate section. Oh, and I used my handy cookie scoop in the peanut butter mixture, instead of trying to form peanut butter balls by hand. My cookie scoop fits about a tablespoon and a half, but I only scooped up about a teaspoon worth of filling for each sandwich, just eyeballing it. With the opening of the scoop facing upwards, click the handle a few times, causing the peanut butter to roll back and forth and form a tiny little ball. Once this is done, you can just tip the ball onto the pretzel, then squash it down with another pretzel. No sticky fingers! 

I give this recipe two thumbs up (okay, with the Dr.'s vote that's actually four thumbs up) and will definitely be making some of these again. Since the pretzel sandwiches didn't make it to Saturday, I'm going to try coating some pretzel sticks with the peanut butter and chocolate, and see how that goes! Will report back. In the meantime, seriously. You need some pretzel sandwiches. Now.