Famous Mall Pretzels

When Little ButterYum and ButterYum Jr. asked if they could make these copycat mall pretzels I agreed.  But just before we were supposed to head into the kitchen, I could feel a killer headache coming on so I let the girls tackle the project all by themselves and they did a great job.  The pretzels turned out a little chubbier than their mall cousins, but I loved that they were heart-shaped.  Seasonally appropriate considering Valentine's Day is just a few days away.

I like the cinnamon sugar version, but the girls liked them with salt. Either way, they're great!

Famous Mall Pretzels

makes 6

Printable Recipe

Ingredients

Yeast Mixture:

• 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water

• 1 1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast

Dough:

• Yeast mixture from above

• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

• 1 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt

• 1 cup bread flour

• 3 cups all purpose flour

Baking Soda Solution:

• 2 cups lukewarm water

• 2 tablespoons baking soda

Salt Topping:

• 2-4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

• pretzel salt or Kosher salt to taste

Cinnamon Sugar Topping:

• 2-4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

• pinch of salt

• cinnamon sugar to taste

Directions

1. Make the yeast mixture by sprinkling the yeast over the water; stir to dissolve. Add the brown sugar and salt; stir to dissolve. Add flour; knead until smooth and elastic. Cover and let rest for 1/2 hour.

2. While the dough is rising, prepare the baking soda solution by combining the warm water and baking soda; stir to combine. Be sure to stir frequently during the next step.

3. After the dough has risen, divide into 6 equal portions. Roll each into a long rope about 1/2 inch thick. Shape into pretzels. Dip into the baking soda solution and place on baking sheet to allow for a 2nd rise. Preheat oven to 450F.

4. After pretzels have doubled in size, bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and brush with melted butter and either sprinkle with salt or cinnamon sugar. Enjoy!

Not So Spooky Halloween Brownies

Halloween Ghost Brownies

This is my latest Heavenly Cake Bakers entry - Barcelona Brownies (aka Not So Spooky Halloween Brownies). Baker buddy Matthew suggested I call them Frownies - Perfect!

To be completely honest, I did not set out to turn these brownies into little ghosts, but I'll explain that a little later.

For now let's just go through the recipe, which you can find here. I suppose you could do this with any brownie recipe, or even a mix if you like... just have some fun!

Oh, oh, oh... I want to quickly mention how in love I am with my new BeaterBlade attachment for my KitchenAid. I'll write much more about it once I've had a chance to use it more, but my initial feelings are WOW! No more stopping to scrape the mixer bowl... something I loathed doing!

That being said, the recipe for these brownies instructs the use of the whip attachment (if using a stand mixer), but I used the BeaterBlade and it mixed the ingredients perfectly.

Okay, the recipe starts by making a simple ganache from chocolate and heavy cream - set aside to cool and reserve for use later. Sorry, forgot to get a photo of that step.

Next, I melted butter and chocolate together. Easy, and you don't need a double boiler if you have a good quality heavy duty pan and a very, very low flame. Stir constantly - it doesn't take long to melt and you want to make sure the chocolate doesn't burn.

Then I weighed the remaining ingredients, but you can use standard measuring cups/spoons if you prefer. I opted to omit the nuts from this recipe... I like nuts, but I'm just not a fan of nuts in my brownies.

Okay, I combined the ingredients in the order instructed and placed the batter in a heavy duty quart size storage bag to easily fill my pan. I didn't get my silicone financier pan yet so I used a mini muffin pan instead - this recipe made exactly 24 mini muffin size brownies.

See how neat the zipper bag makes filling the pan? Easy clean up too... just throw the bag away when you're done.

Into a 325F oven for 12-15 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 194F.

Don't they look good?

As soon as the brownies come out of the oven, you poke three holes in each using a chopstick or 1/4-inch dowel.

You're supposed to coat the chopstick/dowel with oil to keep the brownie particles from sticking, but I found myself constantly removing brownie bits and recoating the dowel with oil.

Which reminds me of this quick tip - did you know the best knife to use when cutting brownies is a plastic disposable knife? It's true... absolutely no sticking! So I guess I'll start my search to find a set of plastic chopsticks.

Now it's time to fill the holes with the reserved ganache. I find this process a bit messy if using a spoon or pastry bag, but these plastic squeeze bottles make the job effortless!

See how neat :).

Hmmm... I had exactly enough ganache to fill each hole, but it seeped down into the brownies and left these odd looking open voids. Kinda reminded me of alien faces. Not very appetizing.

What to do , what to do...

(lightbulb!!) Since I'm not very fond of alien faces, and since it is October, little ghosts seemed more seasonally appropriate. A quick sprinkling of powdered sugar really helped to drive home the ghost theme... let's see if the kids get it when they come home from school.

(update - yes, they recognized the little ghosts right away)

Be careful not to poke those holes too deeply... I found little puddles of ganache under all my brownies. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to visit!