Salty Sweet Treats

If you had to make a choice between salty or sweet, would you be able to chose? If not, you’ve come to the right place. There’s no reason you can’t work both the salty and sweet taste buds at the same time. While you’re at it, share the experience with some friends.

First course:

White chocolate dipped pretzel sticks. Easy AND quick. Throw a few (or five) in a bag, tie with a pretty bow, and you’ve got a nice foodie gift. In fact, the culinary creative team will be creating a large number of these pretzels to use as table gifts for a holiday party!

Melt some white chocolate, dip a pretzel rod about a third of the way into the white chocolate, put onto a baking sheet lined with wax paper, and throw on some sprinkles! We found that the braided honey wheat rods give a little added hint of sweetness.

Second course:

Chocolate dipped potato chips. We promise, these are delicious. In fact, they were so delicious that they were immediately removed from sight as soon as the photos were finished. This could be a great addition to a movie basket gift.

Melt some semi sweet or milk chocolate (or use chocolate bark, like we did.) and dip half of a ridged potato chip into the chocolate. Give the chip a few quick side to side shakes to remove excess chocolate from between the ridges.

Third course:

Sweet and spicy nuts. So we mixed it up a bit, threw in some spice, but as said in a previous post “variety is the spice of life”.

1 lb. of mixed nuts (you can create your own mixture, or buy pre-mixed)
2 egg whites
½ tsp. water
½ tsp. vanilla extract
½ c. sugar
1 tsp. salt (reduce or omit if your nuts are pre-salted)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. cayenne (can be halved if you want to cut the heat.)
¼ tsp. ground ginger
¼ tsp. ground nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil.

Whip the egg whites, water, and vanilla extract until frothy. Add nuts and mix until they’re coated.

Blend the rest of the ingredients in a separate bowl. Pour ¾ of the sugar mixture over the nuts, and mix until nuts are covered.

Spread nuts onto baking sheet and pour remaining sugar mixture over them.

Bake for 30 minutes, checking every 10 minutes.. If you can, stir the nuts around a bit to make sure they’re browning evenly. They may stick to the foil or parchment, it happens, just let them be.

Let the nuts cool until you’re able to handle them without burning yourself. Remove the nuts from the lined pan (this may take some effort, but it’s completely worth it), and put in a storage container.

There ya have it, three salty sweet and delicious treats worthy enough to share!!