my favorite type of snack: salty and crunchy

For the life of me I can't remember where I picked up this idea... but it's a hit in our household!

Take a tray of Candiquik's vanilla candy coating, a bottle of salted peanuts and some pretzel sticks (or twisted pretzels - whatever works for you).



This literally takes 2 1/2 minutes...



The candy coating melts in 1 min, with a quick stir and then another 15 seconds, and another stir.



Then pour it directly over the peanuts and slightly crushed pretzels.



Press it out onto a lined cookie sheet... let it sit for a while and the candy coating will harden up in about an hour or two.

To serve it up, you just need to chip it apart real quick and serve up whatever portion won't make you feel guilty...



But if you go back for a second helping I won't tell anyone...



enjoy your time in the kitchen...

RECIPE: Red Velvet and White Chocolate Cake Balls

You know you want one...

They are super easy to make... they just take a little patience and a little time. Here's how I enjoyed my Saturday afternoon!



I gathered my ingredients for the project... candy coating (vanilla flavored), my cream cheese frosting and the red velvet cake (that has been baked, cooled and crumbled). (Confession: I made Red Velvet Cupcakes earlier this week and simply set aside both cupcakes and frosting to make these with. Easy enough, eh?!)



I placed the cake crumbs and frosting in a bowl big enough to mix it up...



After mixing, I decided it needed a little bit more frosting...



Yeah, that looks good... where's my ice cream scoop?



At this point the "dough" is too gooey to roll into balls. So I scooped them into the mini-muffin tins... and will roll the dough into balls after they've been in the freezer for several hours.







But as you can see, that last spoonful wasn't really enough to make another ball. Oh darn...





Now that the balls have been in the freezer for at least two hours, I'm ready to get down to business.



I melted the candy coating according to the instructions on the back of the package. Note: when the package instructions say to heat for 10 seconds and then stir, make sure you follow those instrutions. Otherise you'll have clumps... like I do. Who can blame me?! We ARE making cake balls!



I took the frozen scoops of dough/frosting and rolled them into a ball. But the warmth from my hands really worked quick to make these soft... so I worked fast. I dropped the ball in the candy coating, rolled it around until evenly coated and extracted to cool on some parchment paper.







Roll and repeat...



I then forced myself to walk away for about 15 minutes... that's about all they needed.




I promise you... you want to make these!










I'm kinda sad I waited over a year between first seeing these and making them for the first time... that's just not right. Period.



enjoy your time in the kitchen...