Chocolate dipped pretzels

My parents stopped by the other weekend on their way through town and left us with a special surprise.  My dad (Great Fan of the Blog, GFOB) works in a candy making operation and some of their ingredients had been compromised (basically a hole was punched in a piece of plastic) which meant that some ingredients would have to be thrown out.  Since my family has a strong frugal gene, my dad brought me a hunk of dark chocolate that he liberated from the dumpster.

I was tempted to gnaw on the block for the next few hours until it was gone but I decided it was best to find a way to spread out my enjoyment instead.  Since we had a bag of pretzels leftover from our adventures in fondue making, I decided to melt down the chocolate to dip the pretzels in to.

Our small soup pot has a double boiler attachment but using a metal bowl would have been just as easy (probably even easier since the chocolate would pool at the bottom).

We took two or three pretzels at a time and dipped them in to the chocolate.  We set the dipped pretzels on to waxed paper to cool and harden.

I've mentioned before that we don't keep desserts around often because of our tendency to eat them all in one sitting.  So far we have managed to have some semblance of self control with these, though it has been a challenge.  It still is probably easier to just keep sweets out of the house, but when a GFOB shows up with a sweet hunk of chocolaty goodness, it is hard to say no.