The spirit of Halloween is in the air, so for this week’s Pinterest DIY challenge I thought I would take some of that spirit and make it into a festive and (hopefully) delicious treat.

I scrolled through plenty of hot dog mummies and peanut butter cup spiders.

A lot of the suggestions were too simple to be called “challenges,” considering many of them only required combining different pre-made ingredients to make something spooky. Others were downright gross. It might be in the holiday spirit, but who really wants to eat realistic-looking severed fingers? I’ll pass.

I, finally, came across a pin for pumpkin pretzels, mini pretzels covered in orange-dyed white chocolate. The instructions were straightforward and the ingredients were easy to find at the grocery store.

The recipe called for a bag of white-chocolate chips, a quarter of a bag of mini pretzels, a packet of M&M’s, orange food coloring and a tablespoon of shortening.

I melted the white chocolate in the microwave, which was much more convenient than the double boiler method that many recipes require.

The instructions told me to add the shortening to the white chocolate to make the chocolate thinner and easier for dipping. I’ve never used shortening before, so I didn’t know it has a tendency to burn quickly, whether on a stovetop or in a microwave, so that became a bit of an issue. It was an easy fix, however, and I added the food coloring to the melted chocolate.

Once the mix was the appropriate pumpkin orange color, I recruited a roommate and we started dipping the mini pretzels in the chocolate.

We set the pretzels out on a cookie sheet covered in wax paper and gave them little M&M stems in the crook at the top of the pretzels. They were all supposed to have green stems, but the candy factory shorted us in green chocolates, so our pumpkins had unconventional colored stems.

As soon as they were set on the wax paper the chocolate began to harden on the pretzels, so within 20 to 30 minutes the chocolate-covered pretzels were solidified and ready to eat. If you’re working with a time limit, you could try throwing the pretzels in the freezer for a few minutes to speed up the solidifying process.

The process took about half an hour, and once the pretzels were finished my roommates and I tested them, and they tasted even better than they looked. I’ve always been a fan of chocolate-covered pretzels, but the white chocolate put a nice spin on the classic.

I brought a bowl full to the Daily Wildcat’s newsroom. The reviews were positive all around, and many people took two or three. The pretzels are small and addicting enough that you and your friends won’t be able to only eat one.

These chocolate-covered pumpkin pretzels were easy and enjoyable to make, taste wonderful and get everyone into the Halloween spirit. I recommend them to anybody looking for something to make for a party, for friends or just for themselves.

Now excuse me while I go make some more for Saturday.

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