Spicy Pretzel Snack

Over the weekend we had our annual Buddies Christmas party. This is a long standing tradition in our group of friends where we get together to eat, drink, and be merry! We get out the board games or the Wii and just enjoy a night of good company. Speaking of board games, have you ever played Apples to Apples or Mad Gab? Those are two games that we LOVE. And they seem to get better (see: ridiculous) with the more beverages you have ;)

So here was the spread for the evening... no meal served, just a bunch of snacks!

Spicy Pretzels
Frosted Sugar Cookies
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Magic Bars
Russian Tea Cakes
Peanut Brittle
Chips and Salsa
Chicken Enchilada Dip (not pictured, coming soon!)
Salami, crackers, cheese
BBQ Meatballs in the crockpot





Nothing too fancy, but everything tasty!

The recipe I wanted to share with you guys is for the Spicy Pretzels. This is another one that my mom passed on to me. It's insanely simple (like most things on my blog), but great if you love a salty party treat.

Ingredients:

• 2 bags of pretzels (roughly 30 ounces)
• 10 oz of butter flavor popcorn oil
• 2 packets of dry ranch dressing (I used Hidden Valley - one spicy, one regular.)
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp garlic salt

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 200. Which is more like "turn oven on" because there isn't much preheating necessary to reach 200 degrees ;)
• Put pretzels in a large roasting pan, like something you would roast a turkey in... with tall sides.
• Mix all dry ingredients into oil, stir well.
• Now pour that buttery oil mixture over the pretzels and turn to coat. Once all of the pretzels look like they've been coated, pop it in the oven for 20 minutes.
• After 20 minutes, take them out, stir again, put back in the oven. This is a very similar process to making chex mix!
• Keep repeating until there is no oil mixture at the bottom of your roasting pan.

Then cool, and enjoy! See? Easy! And so, so good. I will say, the name doesn't seem to fit my tastes of 'spicy'. They definitely had a tasty tang to them, but only a subtle hint of heat. Next time I would do both ranch packets in spicy and add some crushed red pepper too. Another modification I will make next time? Garlic powder instead of garlic salt. Either way, try these out! There are plenty of ways to play with this recipe.

Happy Holidays!