Chocolate on the Side

I've never been a chocolate girl. I can trace it back to the year I got a sit-n-spin for Christmas and my parents were too busy with my newborn brother to prevent me from eating every last piece of chocolate in my stocking before breakfast. It was an ugly scene. I'm surprised my brother still doesn't have nightmares about it.

However, over the years I've warmed up to chocolate a bit. While I would never sit down to eat a bar, I do enjoy reese's cups, chocolate chip ice cream and chocolate sprinkles to name a few. A little chocolate on the side. And if there's a salty spin - like chocolate dipped pretzels - even better. So while it wouldn't usually be my go-to recipe, last weekend I decided to make chocolate thumbprints rolled in pretzels. As J tells it, they are just too easy to keep popping into your mouth. I have to agree.

C was my helper and after trying a few different jobs, we realized that the 'rolling in pretzels' station was her calling. She was pretty good in the sampling department as well.

Our baking life is a bit complicated right now and we're having to experiment and learn as we go. The sticks of butter with the nice dashed measurement down the sides do not exist here so we have to weigh everything out. The oven is convection which wreaks havoc on bake times although once we get the hang of it, should be a plus. And the timer on the oven is only in 5 min. increments which I found pretty useless so I reverted to my iPhone. Little did I know that the timer had to be on to keep the oven on. Yep, winging it a bit. But at least J got our kitchen aid mixer to work!

Here's a link to the recipe if you're interested. I only baked half of the dough initially, so this weekend I'm going to bake the rest but I might try rolling them in some nuts instead of pretzels.