Chocolate Cookie Butter Pretzel Treats

I recently made these delicious treats for an end-of-the-semester party in my gender and religion class.  I chose the cookie butter instead of peanut butter because there were a few people with peanut allergies in my class as well as the fact that I had a jar of cookie butter that I got at a Trader Joe's on a trip to New Jersey a couple of months ago that wasn't getting eaten (I discovered that I didn't like it by itself, okay?).

Note: Not all of them are covered in chocolate because I heated the chocolate 4oz. at a time and accidentally burnt the first two batches of it in the microwave (oops) and I'm too broke to buy more right now (yay college!).  However, 4oz. (1/2 cup) will cover about 10 treats.

Here's what you'll need:

• a cookie sheet
• parchment paper
• however many mini pretzels you want (I used 40 for this)
• a jar of cookie butter
• 8oz. of mini chocolate chips
• some festive-looking cupcake liners (optional, but my mom bought these for me and I thought they were cute.

First, start by lining the cookie sheet with parchment paper.  Then place 20 pretzels on top like so.

Then take some cookie butter and spread it all over the pretzels.  Go ahead and place another one on top of those bad boys.

Heat up the chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl for thirty seconds at a time, stirring very well in between until it is completely melted (it should take a total of about 3 minutes).  I cannot stress enough how imperative it is that you need to stir it in between, and not like some weak, half-baked stirring either.  Like you better get in there and mix that stuff up or else you'll have some gross, burnt chocolate on your hands and that's not fun.

Anyway, place one of the treats in the melted chocolate and stir it around, flip it over, basically just make sure it's covered.  Take it out and place it on the pan.  It'll look something like the picture on the right.

Do that for all your treats (or only half of them if you're like me and burnt so much of your chocolate that that's how many you can do).  Let them harden overnight at room temperature or you can speed things up by putting them in a fridge for a few hours.  After they've done that you can put them in the cute little cupcake holders like so or just go ahead and enjoy their deliciousness without all that fancy stuff.

Happy baking!
~xoxo Alex