Quick Teacher Gift

George goes to two different preschools. Between them he has eleven teachers, aides, and therapists. While I believe that the teachers in our life deserve Christmas presents, and I want to give them presents, eleven gets to be a bit much. So I decided to do a small handmade, edible present, accompanied by a token gift card.

I was going to do this project with the kids, but circumstances left me with time available only in the evening after they went to bed. It would definitely be a great (and yummy) project for them to help with though. I melted Ghirardelli white chocolate in the microwave and dyed it green with food coloring. After dipping the small stick pretzels into it, I laid them on a cooling rack while the chocolate set. The chocolate hardened very quickly, but as I filled each rack, I placed it into the freezer for about 20 minutes to be sure. I stored them in an airtight container in the refrigerator overnight.

(Side note: I tried to do some in red-dyed chocolate, too, but after the initial melt, it hardened into a clay-like consistency and would NOT remelt! I heated it repeatedly and it was hot to the touch, but still looked like Play-doh! Who ever heard of chocolate that wouldn't melt??? So, the teachers got green pretzels only.)

This morning I put about two dozen into each of these cute little seasoning shakers I found and used ribbon to attach the gift cards. The teachers at his morning school started munching on the pretzels right away and were happy about the fun, reusable packaging.

This is definitely an idea to remember for next year!