freshINSPIRE Sweet & Salty Snaps

For this week's Make it Monday we would like to share a quick and easy treat . . . Sweet & Salty Snaps.  This is a great idea for a birthday party, football party, holidays, or really any celebration.  Not only are they easy to make, but there are only three ingredients.  A large batch can be made in 15 minutes!

Over the weekend we had family and friends over for a Batman Birthday party, and decided to use blue and yellow M&M's.  Grey M&M's would have also worked out well, but there were plenty of blue and yellow in the standard M&M bag to make enough for the crowd.

If you are looking for specific colors, check out the M&M's website.  There are 25 different M&M's colors to choose from, including some fun Shimmer Pearl, Shimmer Platinum, and Shimmer Golden.  When customizing an order, you can add images, clip-art, and messages.  A 7oz bag of standard colors is around $6.99/ea (without images or clip-art), and a 7oz bag with Shimmer M&M's cost us $8.49/ea. 

Many party stores such as Party City also sell bags of M&M's in a single color. 

Ingredients

• Hershey Kisses or Wilton Candy Melts (Sold at Michaels, or JoAnn's)

• Pretzels - Both the square and the bow shaped pretzels work really well

• M&M's

• (Optional) Parchment Paper - I highly recommend this if your looking to save time,  and a quick cleanup.

Directions

1. Heat oven to 275 degrees.
2. Cover a metal pan with parchment paper.
3. Lay out the pretzels on the pan.
4. Add a Hershey Kiss or Chocolate Drop on top of each pretzel
5. Bake for 3 minutes.
6. Remove from the oven, place an M&M on top of each pretzel. Lightly push them in so that they will stay.

Some things we learned while making these:

• Preparation is key!

• If you are using specific colors from the bag, it is easier to sort out the colors you want to use first.  If not, you will be sorting through them all while trying to get them on the chocolate before it starts to harden.

• Decide if you prefer the "M" to show.  If not, it's easier to spread them out with the "M" face down before the pretzels come out of the oven.

Enjoy!