Pretzel Caramel Bark: Gift Idea for Kids to Make

This month, it seems like there is a birthday to celebrate about every other day. We love giving homemade presents to our loved ones, but we are getting short on time! And then we remembered that my Mom’s best friend always gives homemade bark for Christmas every year. It makes our whole family sick. Yes, I said sick. It is so good that we all cannot stop eating it to the point that we get belly aches. So we decided to find a recipe that might come close to her delicious present. Turns out, this pretzel caramel bark is a great gift idea for kids to make.

Easy Steps to Make Pretzel Caramel Bark:

We started by spraying our pan with oil and then laying out the pretzels. We thought we would send you all a message.

After playing with a few more messages, we combined our butter and sugar and were ready to face the cooking.

We assumed that this would be the hard part. We have looked at a few candy recipes before, and it always seems to be somewhat complicated with the perfect temperatures. But this was easy!

After the butter melted and started to bubble, we set the timer. We were expecting to have to check the temperature of the mixture, so keeping track of the time felt easy. Except my hands were getting hot as I stirred. Good thing we switched to a larger whisk.

When our three minutes were up, we carefully poured the caramel over the pretzels. At first, we were a bit stressed that it was not covering all of the pretzels perfectly, but it ended up spreading while cooking. We tried to be careful not to move the pretzels around.

Finishing the Pretzel Bark:

Can we just tell you how wonderful this smelled while it was in the oven? Our next step was to spread the chocolate chips across the top. This was a little easier than the caramel, as it did not move the pretzels.

This was looking more and more tempting!

Patience is Needed:

The hardest part of this recipe was waiting for it to cool in the freezer. When it came out, we pulled off the aluminum foil. It was tempting to just start breaking it into random pieces, but since this was for a present, we tried to cut it into squares.

Such an Easy Gift Idea for Kids to Make:

So now I have a true confession. As I was taking pictures, there were a lot of little pieces that broke off. I ate them all. I was just being responsible for cleaning up my mess. I had no other choice but to keep eating. I got a belly ache. It was worth it.

This recipe is a great gift idea for kids to make for everyone on their list. Who does not love getting sick from addicting chocolate pretzel bark? If you need a gift for someone who does not like chocolate, you could also try our fancy Italian lemon cake!