Pretzels! Get your pretzels!

A week ago I was at an activity and a friend made these amazing pretzels. She was kind enough to send me the link for the recipe. Did I follow the recipe exactly? Do I ever? Perhaps one day I'll follow a recipe precisely, but I generally view them as guidelines. Recipes should be personalized in my most humble opinion. If you don't like an ingredient, why should it be included? Put in what you like or omit it all together. Will this change the flavor? Probably but that doesn't mean it won't turn out great!

Today was a rainy day here in Fremont and not conducive to an afternoon walk. What to do instead while taking a break from GMAT studying? Why, try out that awesome pretzel recipe of course! Dean said I couldn't bake sweets but he said nothing about breads.

Here's a link to the original recipe. I always adjust it in this blog to what I change.

Aunt Annie's Soft Pretzels Recipe

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup warm water
1 1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/8 teaspoon salt
4 cups regular flour
2 cups water
2 tablespoons baking soda
coarse salt to taste
4 tablespoons butter (melted)

Directions:

Sprinkle yeast on lukewarm water in mixing bowl; stir to dissolve. Add sugar, salt and stir to dissolve; add flour and knead dough until smooth and elastic. Let rise at least 1/2 hour.

While dough is rising, prepare a baking soda water bath with 2 cups water and 2 Tbsp baking soda. (At this point, I put the baking soda water into a sauce pan and brought it to a boil right before I was ready to 'bathe' the pretzels.) Be certain to stir often. After dough has risen, pinch off bits of dough and roll into a long rope* (about 1/2 inch or less thick) and shape.

Dip pretzel in soda solution (I counted to 10) and place on greased baking sheet. Allow pretzels to rise again. (Since it took me a few minutes to bathe all the pretzels 2 at a time, I placed the baking sheet into the oven after the last pretzels were 'bathed'.) Bake in 450 oven for about 10 minutes or until golden. Brush with melted butter** and enjoy!

Toppings: after you brush with butter try sprinkling with coarse salt. Or for Auntie Anne's famous Cinnamon Sugar, try melting a stick of butter in a shallow bowl (big enough to fit the entire pretzel) and in another shallow bowl make a mixture of cinnamon and sugar. Dip the pretzel into the butter, coating both sides generously. Then dip again into the cinnamon mixture. Enjoy!

* The longer and thinner you can make the dough rope, the more like Auntie Anne's they will be.

**Sweet butter, not regular butter, is one of her secrets!

I'm ashamed to admit I ate quite a few. Out of the the 20+ pretzels made, only 4 are left by the time I write this. I did not eat all of them, as Greg and Dean had a few, but they were so addicting that Friday night and they were just as good today. My friend made 2 flavors: salted and sugar & cinnamon. She also had a nacho cheese dip available. I stuck with the salted and buttered type this time.

White Chocolate Chip Oreo Brownies (Can we say sugar coma?)

A friend of mine was moving back home to Utah after being laid off and I learned his favorite cookies are Oreos. Sure, I could have just bought a bag of Oreos and left them at his door, but wouldn't you rather get a plate of homemade White Chocolate Chip Oreo brownies instead? I thought so.

This recipe is actually a culmination of a few recipes I have looked at. I think it is safe to say it is a Carrie Original! One recipe called for too much sugar and too many eggs, and another friend told me that he uses half white and half brown sugar in his brownies and they always taste amazing. (He also adds almond extract but this will have to be a different blog.)

I had a leftover bag of white chocolate chips in the pantry since making the peppermint bark back in December, and they stare back at me every time I go into the pantry, asking me to use them. Hence the use of white chocolate chips in the brownies.

Ingredients

* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 1 cup butter
* 3 eggs
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup cocoa powder
* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 cup mini-white chocolate chips (or regular chips chopped up)
* 20 crushed Oreo cookies (Leave it a little chunky so you can tell they are Oreos)

Cream sugar, butter and eggs, then add vanilla.
Mix dry ingredients (cocoa powder, flour, baking powder and salt) together then add slowly to wet ingredients. Add chips and cookies at the end.
Pour into a greased 9"x13" pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

First time making this, I used the whole white chocolate chips and they all sunk to the bottom! So it was brownies on a white chocolate crust. It tasted fine, just not what I wanted. Hence the reason for the mini-chips or chopped up regular ones.

After this concoction, Dean told me to lay off on baking sweets for awhile as we have quite a fair amount of sweets that need to be consumed before more is made.