Oreos Pretzel Frogs

Are these not the cutest little frogs you’ve ever seen?  And they are edible, made with one of America’s favorite cookies, Oreos.  And pretzels.  Almost too cute to eat.  Almost.

These are a fun, super easy treat that kids (big and small) will love.  I thought they’d be fun since today is St. Patrick’s Day, but you could find all kinds of perfect reasons to make them.  Spring is coming up.  Easter.  Heck, you could make these for no special reason at all. 

My mom sent me a picture of them a couple months ago, then I looked them up on the world wide web again and they are found in many places with each one made slightly different.  You can easily do them however you wish.  I used some candy eyeballs and Fruit by the Foot candy that I cut for the tongues.  These are fun because you can use any flavor of Oreos you’d like.  You could even live a little on the edge and do all different colors of frogs. 

Oreos Pretzel Frogs, by Katrina, Baking and Boys! adapted from all over the web

12 Oreos cookies, any flavor

24 pretzel twists

7 ounces (half a bag) of green Wilton candy melts

24 candy eyeballs

1 strawberry/red Fruit by the Foot candy roll up, or any other candy that can easily cut/shape

green sugar sprinkles, optional

Unroll the Fruit by the Foot and cut into small tongue shapes.  Line a baking sheet with waxed paper.  Melt the candy melts according to package directions.  Dip each pretzel in the candy, using a fork to lift them out of the bowl.  Tap the excess melted candy off the pretzel by gently tapping the fork that is holding the pretzel on the bowl.  Lay them on the baking sheet, laying two next to each other so they are just touching.  After dipping all of the pretzels, dip each Oreos cookie one at a time, also tapping the extra candy off the cookie and lay each cookie on top of the pretzels. 

Sprinkle the back of each cookie with green sprinkles if desired.  Stick a cut out tongue in the center of each cookie.  Let the candy melt harden slightly.  Once it is starting to set, put the candy eyes on the tops and hold in place for a few seconds.  If they aren’t staying upright very well, wait until the candy melt is hardened a little bit more.  If it has hardened too much, carefully dip the bottom of each candy eye into the candy melt to use as “glue”.  Let all the candy frogs set completely.  Easily double the recipe.

Served these cookies with a simple “Shamrock” Shake.  Filled the blender with vanilla ice cream (about 4-5 cups), added milk (about 3 cups), about 10 drops of green food coloring and 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract.  Blend until smooth.  This made about 6 eight ounce cups.

Brownie Batter Dip

A couple weeks ago I saw this delicious looking Brownie Batter Dip on Mel’s Kitchen Café and decided I needed to make it.  Love it!  I could eat it by the spoonsful, but it really is great with pretzels, animal crackers or graham crackers.  I didn’t try it, but it’d also be great with fresh fruit.  I also thought it would be a great sandwich cookie filling for whoopie pies or something.  In fact I tried it as a filling in some zucchini cookies I made this week.  I’m even thinking it would be a great topping for cupcakes. 

I made some minor adaptations to the recipe.

Brownie Batter Dip, by Katrina, Baking and Boys! adapted from Mel’s Kitchen Café

8 ounces 1/3 less fat cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter (or butter), softened

2 cups (220 grams) powdered sugar, sifted

5 tablespoons (37.5 grams) all purpose flour

5 tablespoons (25 grams) cocoa powder

2 tablespoons (27.5 grams) brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

**You might need a tablespoon or two of milk for the desired consistency, I didn’t use any

Pretzels, animal crackers, graham crackers, fruit

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the cream cheese and butter and beat until light and fluffy.  Scrape sides of bowl.  Add the powdered sugar and beat until well combined.  Add the flour, cocoa powder, brown sugar and vanilla.  Beat until fluffy and smooth.  Add milk a teaspoon at a time, beating together until desired consistency.   Serve with pretzels, crackers, etc. 

Do you like brownie batter?  This is the perfect solution from eating unbaked brownie batter (not that there is anything wrong with that). :)

**Disclaimer—no content or photos of this blog may be copied without permission from Katrina at Baking and Boys!

World Nutella Day 2012—Pretzel Nutella Chunk Cookies and Nutella Frosted Nutella Brownies

Today is World Nutella Day!  Nutella lovers all over the world are celebrating their love of Nutella Chocolate Hazelnut Spread and sharing it on their blogs, on Twitter and on Facebook.  I’ve joined in the love the last few years and couldn’t resist doing so again.

Thanks go to World Nutella Day creators Sara from Ms. Adventures in Italy and Michelle from Bleeding Espresso.  They came up with this great idea and it’s been delicious to participate in it. 

I made two delicious Nutella-filled treats to share today.  First—Pretzel Nutella Chunk Cookies.  Darn—these are GOOD!  The only chocolate in the cookies are chunks of Nutella.  Chunks, you ask?  I never even thought about making Nutella into pieces and recently saw this brilliant idea from Recipe Boy.  This cute guy is right now better known as the son of the ever-popular Lori from Recipe Girl.  He started his own blog a few months ago and came up with the idea recently of freezing Nutella and cutting it in to chunks.  I had no idea that was possible.  But guess what—it works!

Spoon some Nutella out onto a foil or plastic wrap lined baking sheet and spread it out evenly, mine was probably between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick.  Set it in the freezer until it hardens.  Check out the link above for Recipe Boy’s cookies and tutorial on the Nutella chunks. (I’m giving all credit for this Nutella chunk idea to Recipe Boy because I’ve never seen or heard of it before seeing his cookies recently.)  When is Nutella going to come up with Nutella chips in a bag?!  These chunks need to be carefully stirred in to a cookie dough straight from the freezer and then immediately baked.  They do thaw out a little.  I stirred them into the dough, formed them into cookie dough balls and kept the waiting cookie sheet in the freezer while one sheet was already baking.  Worked great!  Tasted even better!  At our house, what goes better with Nutella than dipping pretzels into it?  I found the cutest little pretzel balls recently and just knew they had to somehow be part of a cookie—and this was perfect—sweet and salty in a cookie=YUM!

Pretzel Nutella Chunk Cookies, by Katrina, Baking and Boys! (inspired by Recipe Boy)

1/2 cup plus 1/2 tablespoon cake flour*

1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons bread flour*

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

5 tablespoons (2  1/2 oz.) unsalted butter, softened

1/4 cup plus 1/2 tablespoon granulated sugar

1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar

1/2 a large egg (I weigh the egg in grams on the scale and remove half—or you could whisk an egg and remove 2 tablespoons as one egg is 1/4 cup)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup pretzel balls (or broken pretzels)

1/2 cup (4 ounces) Nutella chunks**

**Make the Nutella chunks ahead of time.  Spread about 1/2 cup Nutella on a foil lined baking sheet to about 1/8 – 1/4 inch thick.  Set in the freezer for about an hour to set.  Remove from freezer and cut in to chunks.  Keep the chunks in the freezer until ready to use.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 

In a medium sized bowl, combine the flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Whisk together. 

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter, then add the two sugars and beat until well combined.  Scrape the sides of the bowl.  Add the egg and vanilla and beat until light and fluffy.  Add the dry ingredients to the mixer and beat just until combined.  Stir the pretzel balls and Nutella into the dough.  Scoop into about 2 tablespoonsful size dough balls onto baking sheets about 2 inches apart.  Bake for 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and let sit on baking sheet a couple minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. 

*You could probably use just all purpose flour in places of the cake flour and bread flour, but my favorite chocolate chip cookies use cake and bread flours and I love it that way.

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I recently posted some great Nutella Brownies.  They were as “plain” as Nutella brownies can be, but they were sure good!  In honor of World Nutella Day, I decided to kick them up a notch.  A little Nutella frosting and some hazelnuts throughout the brownies did the trick.  Wow!  These were super rich and even more delicious than the “plain” Nutella Brownies!

Instead of the regular brownie recipe that is made in an 8x8 inch pan, I halved these just to try them out and because I wasn’t sure we could eat all of them at the time.  The half recipe was baked in a 9x5 inch bread pan.  They were so good and the recipe would be super easy to double for the 8x8 inch pan!

Nutella Frosted Nutella Brownies (small batch), by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

1/4 cup all purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 large egg

1/2 cup Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup melted unsalted butter

1/4 cup hazelnuts, toasted and chopped

Frosting:

1/4 cup Nutella

3/4 cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons heavy cream

1/2 tablespoon milk

1 tablespoon hazelnuts, toasted and chopped for sprinkling on top

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Line a 9x5 inch bread pan with foil, spray lightly with cooking spray.  (I love the non-stick foil that is available!).  Let the sides of the foil hand over the edge to easily remove the brownies from the pan for cutting them.

Melt the butter in a microwave safe bowl, set aside.  Let sit to cool slightly while you do the next few steps.

Combine the flour and salt in a small bowl.  In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the egg, Nutella, brown sugar and vanilla.  Beat together for a minute or two.   Scrape the side of the bowl.  With the mixer on low speed, add half the flour, then half the melted butter.  Add the rest of the flour, then end with the rest of the butter and mix just until all combined.  Stir in the chopped hazelnuts.  Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly.

Bake for 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out mostly clean.  Cool in the pan until completely cool on a wire rack.  Then, if you have time, or can wait that long, chill the brownies in the refrigerator for a couple hours.  Make the Nutella frosting.  Combine in a medium sized bowl the Nutella and powdered sugar.  Add the cream and stir together well.  If you think it needs a little more moisture, add the milk until desired consistency and spreadable.  Spread the frosting over the brownies and sprinkle some hazelnuts over the top.  Remove from the pan with the foil edges and cut the brownies still laying on the foil on a cutting board.  (I think brownies taste better chilled, but you can also serve/eat them at room temperature.)

Here are a couple of my favorite past Nutella posts!

Nutella Truffle Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies

Homemade Chocolate Graham Cracker Nutella S'mores

Nutella Banana Oatmeal

Nutella Chocolate Cream Pie