Crunchy pretzel, gooey caramel, sweet shatter of chocolate shell–these Chocolate-Drizzled Salted Caramel Pretzels are the ultimate sweet and salty snack!
A salty pretzel stick is the perfect vehicle for so many dips…
Hummus–delicious!
Peanut butter–the best!
Applesauce–sounds weird, but so good!
Spinach artichoke–yes please!
Chocolate–?!
Vegan cheese sauce–I’m not sharing!
Salsa…okay maybe not all dips.
But most of them are perfect on a pretzel. Plus it feels much less weird/socially wrong than peanut butter right off the spoon.
With so many pretzel trials recently, homemade pretzel sticks were an abundant resource in my kitchen. So I came up with the ultimate sweet and salty snack: Chocolate-Drizzled Salted Caramel Pretzels. And when I say sweet and salty, what I really mean is mostly sweet with a smidge of salty to make the sweet flavor even better.
The textural combination of crunchy pretzel + gooey caramel + hard chocolate shell is so good!
I almost made this crazy crunchy caramel-covered treat with actual, real-life, boiled-on-the-stove caramel. But 2 things stopped me: 1) That’s a lot of work. 2) Dates are so very delicious. Oh and bonus reason 3) I almost always burn myself when hot boiling sugar is involved. So that was out.
While I love date caramel to the moon and back, one of it’s fatal flaws is that it doesn’t harden. Not even in the freezer. (Unless you are making ice cream, in which case that’s an enormous advantage!)
I wasn’t asking for hard candy solid, just firm enough to be covered in chocolate without becoming chocolate caramel swirl pretzel mess. A reasonable request I think.
Coconut oil would be the obvious answer, but you guys know I like to keep it oil free around here. A few weeks back I made these delicious Snickers Ice Cream Bars from Feeding Your Beauty, and I remember that she used almond butter in her caramel sauce and it hardened up just enough in the freezer to be drowned in melted chocolate without a problem.
It doesn’t take much, just a tablespoon or so. And you can use any nut/seed butter you like: cashew, peanut, tahini, etc. Not only does it make for easier chocolate coverage, but it also makes for a marvelously much creamier date caramel texture. After about an hour of chilling in the freezer they are ready to be chocolate drizzled (or drowned), and then devouring is just a few more chilly minutes away!
If you really don’t want the extra fat then you can leave out the nut butter, but I’m warning you things might get melty and messy.
You might be confused, thinking “But a frozen pretzel??” Don’t judge. Don’t judge until after you dip, drizzle, and bite into a cold caramel-coated crunchy pretzel stick. It’s amazing! It only takes abut an hour of freezer time for the caramel to set up, and they don’t freeze solid, I promise.
Make room ice cream, you are not the only dessert deserving of a spot on the top shelf of the freezer. Because everyone organizes their freezer by deliciousness from top shelf to bottom, right?
And even the next day after their overnight stay in the freezer they were still delicious. Easy to bite into, perfect amount of caramel gooey-ness, and of course that sweet-shatter of chocolate shell!
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Prep Time:
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PinIngredients
- 15–20 homemade or store-bought pretzel sticks
- 1 cup vegan chocolate chips
Date Caramel
- 10–12 pitted Medjool dates
- 1/2 cup non-dairy milk
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp vanilla bean powder (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
- 1 tbsp almond butter (or any nut/seed butter)
Instructions
- Blend all the ingredients for the caramel.
- Dip each pretzel into the caramel, coating them well.
- Freeze for 1 hour.
- Melt the chocolate.
- Remove the pretzels from the freezer in small batches (they melt fast) and drizzle/coat with the melted chocolate.
- Return to the freezer for a few minutes to allow the chocolate to harden.
- Enjoy! Keep in the freezer.
I popped over here to check out your original pretzel recipe and then I saw these. I literally have no words. ??? Ok, maybe a few! Haha! Back in the day when I ate pretzels I would dip them in peanut butter and then there’s the chocolate covered pretzels that were a dangerous addiction. Enter these salted caramel AND chocolate…you’d have to fight me for one because I’d eat the entire batch!! These sound amazing!!!!! I’m really praying that oats and I can be friends again after this whole protocol is over because I want to try these pretzels!! I do know a certain four year old who would go crazy over them, so I’ll definitely make them for her! ❤️❤️
Just forget the plain ones, THIS is where the real deliciousness is at haha! Oh those chocolate covered pretzels used to be one of my favorite things too. Heck I was even obsessed with the “yogurt” (which was really just sugar lol) covered ones. And pb dipped pretzels–addictive! I just saw a recipe this morning that added peanut butter to date caramel which would’ve been amazing on these. But even without the actual nut butter addition, date caramel is a surpsingly good nut-butter stand in I’m finding. Oh my goodness, that would be amazing if you can reunite with oats! Reintroducing foods should be an interesting process, you’ll have to keep me updated on that 🙂
This is heavenly! I’ve never made my own pretzel sticks before and I really want to now. SO much healthier than store-bought ones. My son is a big pretzel fan, so I can feel good about giving them to him now. That chocolate caramel drizzle just takes it to another level. Thank you for an awesome recipe!
This was my first time making them at home too, none of the GF options out there are all that great. I can’t say they are quite as easy as popping open a bag, but worth it I think! Well you should’ve just sent your son to my house last week, I could’ve used a big pretzel fan taste tester 🙂 Thanks Melissa!
I so am not judging and I LOVE this too much to even express. Seriously… just when I thought that your homemade pretzels couldn’t get any more awesome… you did this. I am so hungry for these right now, it’s not even funny. Plus, super bonus that you didn’t have to boil yourself or otherwise get hurt. And, UM, did we just both release recipes with date caramel in them on the same date? BFF connection. Just sayin’. 😉 It’s almost as if we planned it… almost as if we’re on the same wavelength… almost as if we have something planned soon. Ahem. 😉 Btw, I love that you’re always trying fellow blogger recipes. You are the coolest, most generous cool bean that I know. Oh, you know what I mean! I can’t wait to see if/when you whip up something Halloween themed with these perfectly sweet, lightly salty snacks. Muah! xoxo
I have to admit while I totally love the date caramel in sync-ness, I am a little smidge tad bit jealous of your date caramel? Because it contains peanut butter and that just sounds so stinking good!! So if I make a pretzel crust for your tartlets then can I steal your caramel for my pretzels? That’s fair right?! And a bit confusing lol. But I’m sure it made sense to you since we are so in sync and all 😀 Well we will both be tuning into the NBC wavelength soon! Hope the experimentation is going well over there with your super secret new idea? Love ya! xo
Oh wowwwww!! And I didn’t think your perfect crunchy pretzels could get any more awesome!! These are making me drool, seriously. Thank you for the mention girl, I am so excited to have any part of inspiring the caramel portion of these chocolate covered sweet n’ salty crunchy gems! I’ve got these on my to-do list for the weekend. Like at the top of the list. Such a yummy idea!! 😛
This was actually the recipe goal all along, but silly me decided to actually make the pretzels myself too. So that extended the journey to chocolate caramel pretzel deliciousness by a good bit haha 😀 Your caramel sauce was the bomb, I could (and did) eat that stuff by the spoonful! We really just need to live closer so we can taste test everything the other person makes, because there is not a recipe you post that I don’t crave like crazy??
Salted caramel + chocolate + pretzels = best combination ever! These sound so amazing Natalie, and I love how healthy they are too. I can’t wait to try your delicious recipe! Pinned! <3
Salty sweet is one of my favorite combos, and a little chocolate on top always makes things better right!? 😉 Thanks Harriet!
I can imagine these delicious pretzels being extremely addictive. They’re the kind of snack I would not be able to stop reaching out for more! They look very tasty indeed 😀
Hahaha I definitely found myself in that situation a few times with so many of them around 😀 Luckily the effort of having to make more yourself as opposed to just run to the store helps me control myself lol. Thanks Nadia!