Homemade Gourmet Pretzels

It's hard to believe Christmas is over and we're on the home stretch to start 2009! Normally at Christmas time, like many people I know, I like to make homemade goodies for people I hold near and dear. Especially co-workers and neighbors. Rarely do I send them home to Michigan or Ohio, but this year I decided to.

I made several desserts, but in this post I'm going to focus on the pretzels since they were the easiest to make! I basically melted Semi-Sweet Baker's chocolate, Nestle Chocolate Chips and paraffin wax in the microwave (I know...this is the lazy chef's way of melting chocolate :O). I dipped the pretzels in the chocolate and let the excess run off. I put out four small plates of crushed pecans, candy canes, Heath Bar toffee, and coconut. After the excess chocolate ran off, I rolled the pretzel in a topping - alternating with each one. When I was finished, I had a variety of homemade, gourmet pretzels!

A few weeks ago I found some really cute gift boxes on sale at Target. I picked them up knowing that I would probably find a use for them at Christmas. And wouldn't you know...I found uses for all of them! Especially the round gift box that matched the rectangle box filled with matching notecards. I decided these would go to my husband's sister and her family. I figure we can all use cute notecards in a pinch, and thought it would be nice to put homemade goodies in the round box.

I created an internal shelf of sorts for the round box to put the cookies and buckeyes on. The box would have dwarfed the goodies otherwise. Unfortunately, my homemade, gourmet pretzels didn't fit the diameter of the box, sooooo, I had to create a special box (shown above with ribbon) for them :O) Darn the luck...right? Hee hee

The box I created was very simple. I used the Papertrey Ink stamp set, Floral Frenzy to create the patterned paper for the lid. I think these flowers are almost a perfect match to the box...don't you? I stamped the daisies and centers in Soft Sky, Purely Pomegranate, and Chocolate Chip.

I used Papertrey Ink Kraft paper for the base because it's my heaviest cardstock by far! I cut both the patterned paper and the Kraft paper 7" x 11" and scored on all sides 1.5" from the edge. I cut each 1.5" score line on the left and right side of the paper (top and bottom) in order to turn the tabs in and form the box. Before I did that, I traced one of my large rectangle Nestabilities on the plain side of the white paper and cut it out to create a window.

Next, I adhered a piece of transparency to the inside of the lid. I used red adhesive tape to secure the box and lids' sides.

I placed four different pretzels on top of wax paper in the bottom of the box, topped with a piece of transparency and added another layer of four pretzels. Notice I also used a small circle punch to cut half circles on each side of the lid to make it easier to remove.

All done...after tying some satin Purely Pomegranate ribbon around the box. I think it turned out really cute :O) I hope they like it.







Hope you all had a spectacular Christmas! I hope to get my craft room organized this weekend...wish me luck :O)