Dipped Pretzels

So I wanted to do something for the people at work for Christmas without spending a fortune. In our firm it is just my boss and me, but we share office space with 3 other law firms and we all do everything together. At my old job last Christmas a co-worker made these awesome dipped pretzels, so I got her recipe and made those today.

Pretzels, chocolate, white 'chocolate' (which I don't like, but other people seem to for some unknown reason), sugars, candy

I had to buy a candy thermometer, and those 2 silver tubes are aluminum tubes my dad cut for me to have a cylinder for 'easy dipping' (good ol' dad always helping out with my endless projects!)

Stirring together butter, cream and salt

Boiling the sugars, corn syrup and water... they weren't kidding when they said to use a 3-4 qt pot, this was right before it almost boiled over

All mixed together in a bigger pot boiling, boiling, boiling until it got to 248*

There it is at 248*, or so I thought, I can't figure out what happened, because her caramel stayed kind of chewey and mine got super hard :(

So my plan for those tubes was to rubberband on a layer of saran wrap and then pour the caramel in there for easy dipping of the pretzels. Turns out saran wrap cannot hold up to magma hot caramel and it quickly started pouring out the bottom and onto my finger. OUCH. So I just smeared it on with a spoon instead.

Turns out plastic cooking spoons are no match for 248* caramel either

Ok, well after the pretzels were all carameled I wanted to try again with my tubes. So I melted the chocolate

It worked a lot better with not as hot chocolate and a foil banded-on bottom

Same thing with the white 'chocolate'

And now the finished project

M&Ms, candy cane, salted. I might just use quart bags because the grocery store was out of cute ones and I couldn't stand the thought of another stop. I hope they're good even if the caramel is hard. They look pretty and took forever! So I hope they like them.