Cooking With Kids: Festive Holiday Pretzel Treats

Encouraging Speech & Creating Yum! Festive Holiday Pretzel Treats

The Holiday season is the perfect time to teach children about the spirit of giving. Gift giving can be a good opportunity and a first step in teaching children to give of themselves. Imagine the sense of pride that can go along with the gift! It is easy to get wrapped up in the commercialism of the season, and miss the true meaning of the holidays. Emphasize that it is the care that goes into gift giving, rather than the cost of the gift, that is important. And best of all, presenting it from the heart makes all the difference! You can help children explore ideas about what they can make and give to others. Often times it is the simplest gift that makes the greatest impact, and who doesn’t love “sweet treats” during the holidays?

Pretzel Treats Ingredients

Preheat oven to 250F degrees.

• 1 bag of mini pretzels
• 1 bag square-shaped pretzels
• 1 bag of Hershey‘s Kisses Hugs & Milk Chocolate Hugs
• 1 bag of candy corn
• 1 bag M&M’s
• 1 Wilton Candy Eyeballs

Pretzel Treats Instructions/Preparation

Parent: Line baking sheet with parchment paper.

Parent Kiddo: Sort candy corn, M&M’s (red, green and orange), eyes in sets of two and broken mini pretzels for “antlers”.

Kiddo: Align pretzels on the sheet. We kept it to about 6 pretzels per treat (reindeer, turkey and hugs). Unwrap chocolate kisses for reindeer and turkeys. Unwrap hugs and place one on each pretzel.

Parent: Put the pretzels with the chocolate kisses in oven until the kisses begin to melt down. Takes about 4 minutes: set timer.

Parent/Kiddo: While the Kisses or Hugs are melting in the oven, decide what treat you will be making first. If it is the reindeer, make sure all of the ingredients are ready and easy to grab. You will have to work quickly once it comes out of the oven.

Parent: Remove pretzel hugs from oven.

Kiddo:

Reindeer: Gently press a red M&M “nose” towards the bottom of each one. The Kisses should begin to flatten out when you press the nose in it. Then add eyes above nose. Put broken pretzels pieces that look like antlers in the sides at the top above eyes. Note: If it is not flattening out when you add red M&M’s, place the pretzel hugs/kisses back in the oven for 30 more seconds.

Turkey: Gently press an orange M&M nose on its side towards the bottom of each one. The Kisses should begin to flatten out when you press the nose in it. Then add eyes above nose. Stick candy corns pieces in the top to look like feathers.

Red & Green Hugs: Align pretzels on the sheet, just as if you were making the reindeer or turkey. We kept it to about 6 pretzels per treat. Unwrap hugs and place one on each pretzel. Have parent remove pretzel hugs from oven then press a festive red and green M&M on top to flatten out.

Note: If it is not flattening out when you press your candy into the pretzel hugs or kisses, place it back in the oven for 30 more seconds.

Let the pretzel hugs cool completely and let the chocolate set for about 10 minutes in the refrigerator. These are great “make-ahead-treats”: make them 1-3 days before you need them and store covered in the refrigerator.

Gift Bags: We packaged ours for gifts using small red plates and gallon storage bags from the Dollar Store. Tie it up with a colorful, festive, wire ribbon. This is a festive, Holiday Treat for all those we need to give a special “Thank You” hug to.

Eat! Talk! Enjoy!

Language Time Tips:

The holiday time is an ideal time to bond with your child in the kitchen. Why not make this opportunity an ideal time to facilitate language? With these pretzel treats, there are tons of language concepts that can be targeted including: expanding vocabulary, sequencing, following directions and working on basic concepts such as prepositions, actions, colors and shapes.

For more Language Time Tips and for carryover activities for this recipe go here >>

Becca Eisenberg is a mother of two young children and a speech language pathologist, author and instructor. Her website, www.gravitybread.com encourages learning time during mealtime. On her website, she writes children’s book recommendations, app recommendations, as well as child friendly recipes with language tips their family.

Inspired and adapted from Thesunnysideupblog.com and Sallysbakingaddiction.com

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This post originally appeared on our November/December 2014 Magazine