My latest obsession has been with the chocolate pretzel cupcake at Trophy Cupcakes. I had it several weeks ago and it was delicious. It was sweet and salty, rich and crunchy. So many things that I love. By the way, if you're into chocolate covered pretzels, Trader Joe's has some good dark chocolate ones and if you like white chocolate, the Flipz brand is good too.
So, I've been craving this chocolate pretzel cupcake. And it took me awhile to realize they only sell them on Sundays. So, you can imagine the patience I endured before I could have another one. While I was dreaming about our next encounter, I thought, why not make one myself? I just needed a good chocolate cupcake and chocolate frosting recipe, and of course some pretzels. I wanted to find a rich chocolate cake recipe, so the cupcake wouldn't be overpowered by the saltiness of the pretzel. I also wanted a creamy, chocolate ganache frosting to make things a little sweeter and hold everything together.
Being pretty busy the past few weeks, I didn't have time to find any recipes, but decided a brownie mix would do the job. As well as some store-bought chocolate frosting. So I invented my first unofficial recipe for Chocolate Pretzel Brownies.
My first batch came out good, but not salty enough. I simply made the brownies, lightly frosted them in the pan, and individually took each brownie and lightly cracked some pretzels over the top. My next batch turned out better. I crushed the pretzels more. (This time I used a freezer bag and my meat tenderizer/mallet.) And the topping looked a lot more like the pretzel topping on the Trophy cupcake. I think crushing the pretzels more, created smaller particles that could cling to the frosting and coat the brownie better. And those smaller particles also included more salt. I also added all the pretzels at once in a layer in the pan. This made it much faster to cut and serve.
Note: I could have used more frosting to get more pretzels to stick to the top. (Most of the bigger pieces fell off.) And sift out some of the powder that formed through the crushing, so there is a more diverse mixture of pretzel piece sizes. The powder stuck directly to the frosting and created its own non-sticky layer. (Another reason the bigger pieces fell off.) Lastly, you can make the brownies ahead of time, but don't crush the pretzel pieces till the day you're going to serve them or they will become stale and less crunchy. And I would wait to frost the brownies till right before you add the pretzels as well.
