Valentine's Day Soft Pretzels

For the past few days, we have been snowed in here in Chicago. The kids have had their first 2 snow days! We knew it was pretzel making time! We have been making these soft pretzels for a few years now since a friend got us hooked on this simple recipe by Alton Brown. Once you try these, you will never want store bought pretzels again!

We decided to whip up a batch and give them a Valentine's Day flair. Instead of making all of the pretzels salty, we made some sweet with red sugar and some with cinnamon sugar.

We pretty much follow Alton Brown's recipe, except we add 3 tablespoons of brown sugar instead of 1 tablespoon of white sugar (even to the salty pretzels). He makes 8 pretzels, and we make 10 or 12.

After making the dough, and letting it rise, we divide it into 12 equal sized pieces.

We roll each piece out until it is about 18 inches long and 1/2 and inch thick (it will spring back a bit)

Next we bring the ends up to make the top of the heart. We pinched the ends together at the top and the bottom. The kids love to help shape the pretzels. We always have to make the boys initials. The recipe is very forgiving. The boys often make weird, abstract shapes, and they cook just fine. Next we boil the pretzels. We decided to boil the sweet pretzels in plain water instead of the baking soda water that the salty pretzels are cooked in. They were boiled for 30 seconds like the other pretzels. Put them in the pot carefully and remove them with a large slotted spoon.We brushed the sweet pretzels with melted butter and sprinkled them with a generous helping of colored sprinkles and cinnamon sugar.We cooked them at 450 degrees, but because we make smaller pretzels we only cook them for about 10 - 12 minutes until they are golden brown.They turned out great!

The boys gave them rave reviews!!!