ALIEN PRETZELS

Steps:

• First step is to melt the chocolate. I put 1/3 of the bag of white chocolate chips into 1 small glass bowl, another third into a separate glass bowl then put about 4 TBSP into a small ziplock bag, to use for decorating later on. Before you even put it in the microwave, add about 1/2 TBSP shortening. You need to thin out the chocolate prior to dunking the pretzels or else the chocolate will be so thick you won't even be able to tell it's a pretzel under there! Shortening is the ONLY thing that will do this- don't add water, butter, etc.
• Go slowly! White chocolate seizes easily, and you don't want to coat your pretzels with grainy chocolate, right? Go slowly and stir minimally. I put mine on for 1 minute, stirred gently, then put it in for an additional 30 seconds. When I took it out, the chocolate still looked solid. It wasn't! I added green food coloring to one bowl of chocolate, then left the other white. Stir gently, until it's nice and smooth. These 2 bowls of chocolate are what you'll use to coat your pretzels.
• I've tested out a few ways to coat pretzels in chocolate and none of them really work as well as simply using your fingers. So that's what I do! As you dip the pretzels, try and have the bottom hole of the pretzel stay empty- this is what makes the mouth of the alien and you want it to be open! I used a toothpick and just sort of poked it in as I was holding the coated pretzel to open it back up (if the chocolate coated it closed.)