Pretzel Chicks

As promised in last week’s bunny pretzels entry, I gave the chick versions a whirl. These turned out much better, probably because they only required me to draw a black dot for an eye. I think I’ll make these for one of the tiers on my Easter sweets tower.

Pretzel Chicks

Ingredients

• Twist pretzels
• Yellow candy melts (available at craft stores)
• Black food marker (NOT Wilton brand; it won’t work on candy coating)
• Optional: Orange-colored candy-coated sunflower seeds (I couldn’t find these, so I just used a little tube of some orange food decorating gel, found in the baking aisle at the grocery store)
• Wax paper or silicone mat (like Silpat)
• Small spoon

Instructions

Lay the pretzels on your wax paper or silicone mat. Melt the yellow candy coating in a microwave-safe bowl, according to package instructions, then use the spoon to fill the pretzels with the melted candy.

Let the pretzels cool for 15 minutes (the longer, the better — the food markers seem to work better on candy coating that’s very well hardened). Then, rotate the pretzels so that the two loops become the head and the wing of the chick, then draw a black dot for an eye, and dab on some orange decorating gel for a beak (or stick on an orange-coated sunflower seed). It’s nice because the little nub that pokes out the side of most twist pretzels kind of looks like a beak already!

If your candy coating isn’t completely smooth (mine wasn’t! I don’t have mad spooning-melted-candy-into-pretzel skills, I guess), you can play with which way to rotate the chick so that the lumpiness works with you, not against you.

So fun to make, and even more fun to eat!