Don’t these look delish? Pretzels. Chocolate. Peppermint. Yes, please.
Grab a bite of these chocolate-coated peppermint pretzels (gluten free!) and you’ll keep coming back for more.
When asked last week in the office during a Nutrition Response Testing follow up visit if I knew of any gluten-free Christmas goodies, I pulled this one out of my hat. We’ve never made these before today and it occurred to me at the time as a healthier swap for some of the junk goodies families will be consuming over the holidays.
What do I mean by junk goodies? Food dyes, powdered sugar (just white refined sugar that’s pulverized), high-fructose corn syrup, white flour … all of these ingredients are found in your run of the mill cookies, candy canes, and frostings. All of these cause a myriad of issues from a blood sugar crash to headaches to hyperactivity, rashes, running noses, coughs, and restless sleep (to name a few …). And, who wants to deal with any of this while spending time with family and friends?
These were easy to make. We had the ingredients on hand (except for the candy canes — I had to run up to the co-op for those, but let’s face it, it’s a mile from my house and I’m there almost daily it seems!), and it was fun for both the 3-year-old and 10-year-old participants.
I didn’t take down measurements, though this one isn’t tough to figure out.
This wasn’t all we made yesterday.
My kids love the chocolate crinkle cookies my mom makes every year. Even though she has begun to make them gluten free, I bake grain free at our house, so found this grain-free chocolate crinkles recipe, which was super easy and a total hit. I love making a fudge every year, and am so into macadamia nuts right now, so this is the fudge recipe I used. We made this nutella style spread (YUM!!!), and will make our favorite cookie cut-out recipe from my girlfriend Kate over at Real Food RN next weekend to bring along to family gatherings.
Chocolate Peppermint Pretzels
Ingredients
- 1 bag Glutino or Snyder's gluten-free pretzels
- 1 bag Enjoy Life chocolate chips
- 1 tablespoon coconut oil
- 2 large candy canes organic with raw sugar; HFCS and food dye free
Instructions
- Place parchment paper down on two cookie sheets.
- Gently melt the chocolate chips with a tablespoon of coconut oil in small sauce pan on low, stirring regularly.
- Crush two candy canes in a ziploc bag (I let Odin go at with his hammer on the kitchen floor!)
- When the chocolate is melted, we dipped each pretzel in and set it on the parchment until the whole bag was gone.
- Sprinkle the crushed candy canes over the pretzels (toward the end, Annie began to roll the chocolate covered pretzels in the crushed candy canes).
- Place the cookie sheet in the freezer to quickly firm up (about 15 minutes), then stack and store in the fridge.
- ***To leave the candy canes out altogether, you could place a drop of Young Living Vitality peppermint oil in the chocolate/coconut oil mix for the minty flavor***
