Ways to Cook With Pretzels

Sesame-Soy Nut and Pretzel Mix Recipe

Full of salty nuts, pretzels, and cereal and doused with a butter- and Worcestershire-based glaze, the classic snack mix racks up sodium quickly (and who honestly stops at the barely 1/2 cup serving suggestion?). Our Asian-inspired mix saves 160mg sodium per serving with plenty of crunch and bold, salty flavor in a more generous 3/4 cup portion.

Peanut Butter and Pretzel Brownies Recipe

Paring sweet peanut butter with salty pretzels and chocolate make these sweet and salty treats irresistible.

Sea Salt Soft Pretzels Recipe

Twisted, buttered, and salted. Ball park soft pretzels can be enjoyed at home for a light snack or a crowd-pleasing party appetizer.

Pretzel Pie Crust Recipe

Five simple ingredients are all you need to create this from-scratch Pretzel Pie Crust. As effortless to create as a graham cracker crust, pretzels bring a new layer of dynamic sweet-salty flavor personality to the typical crumb crust blueprint. This simple crust makes an ideal shell for any number of fillings--but we especially love it for ice cream. Simply fill with your favorite softened ice cream (strawberry and caramel-flavored ice creams are great here), freeze solid, and top with fresh berries or drizzle with syrup for an exceptionally easy, yet wow-worthy, dessert.

Junk Food Cookie Bars Recipe

The next time you're at the end of an exceptionally rough week, we'd definitely recommend whipping up a batch of these kitchen sink cookie bars. The perfect decadent balance of salty and sweet, these chewy treats are here to satisfy all junk food cravings. We loaded them up with peanut butter, chocolate chips, pretzels, Oreos, potato chips, and M&M’s, but feel free to experiment with swapping in some of your favorite snacks and flavors. 

Monster Cookies Recipe

They’re not called monster cookies because they’re scary… but they are monstrously delicious. In fact. these chunky, chewy  monster cookies might just be the king of all kitchen sink cookies. Featuring peanut butter, oats, crushed pretzels, M&Ms, and chunks of milk chocolate, they hit every necessary cookie note—chewy, crispy, salty, sweet, chocolatey, and buttery. We opted for miniature M&Ms to use in these decadent monster cookies, as we often regular-size to feel a little clunky in the context of a cookie, but feel free to use whatever size you prefer. In fact, you can customize these kid-friendly oatmeal and peanut butter cookies in any number of ways depending on what you like—swap peanut butter for almond better, switch the pretzels for crushed kettle cooked potato chips, use semisweet chocolate instead of milk chocolate, etc. However you spin your personal batch of monster cookies, one thing’s for sure: Pulling out a platter of these loaded treats will always incite excitement. 

Pretzel-Crusted Chicken Breast Tenders with Garlicky Dipping Sauce Recipe

A crunchy coating from a snacktime favorite is sure to win big with the kids--especially when paired with a creamy garlic dip. Honey mustard would be good, too.

Benne Seed Soft Pretzels Recipe

Use fresh dough to create these simple homemade soft pretzels topped with benne (sesame) seeds.

Pretzel-Crusted Chicken Nuggets Recipe

Form a crust and add extra flavor to chicken nuggets with a coating mixture of pretzels and Parmesan cheese.

Dark Chocolate Bark with Pretzels and Dried Cranberries Recipe

Three ingredients are all it takes to make this chocolaty treat of Dark Chocolate Bark with Pretzels and Dried Cranberries.

Strawberry-Pretzel Icebox Pie Recipe

This chilled, creamy strawberry icebox pie is the dessert equivalent of a swimming hole--so refreshing you can't help but dive in. Serve with lightly sweetened, sliced strawberries.

Chocolate Chip-Pretzel Blondies Recipe

These blondies with chocolate chips and pretzels are the perfect salty and sweet combination.

Soft Pretzels Recipe

Enjoy two soft, bready pretzels for under 100 calories. We love these topped with coarse salt but get creative and experiment with different toppings like cinnamon-sugar or Parmesan cheese.

Bacon-Pretzel-Peanut Butter Caramel Apples Recipe

The addition of bacon bits and pretzels offer a salty and sweet twist on the traditional caramel apple.

Strawberry-Pretzel Ice Cream Recipe

Homemade Strawberry-Pretzel Ice Cream results in a sensational salty-sweet flavor, hinting of fresh basil.

Mixed-Berry Pretzel Tart Recipe

A crushed pretzel crust offers a salty and crunchy texture that pairs perfectly with the sweet berries.

Chocolate Chip-Pretzel Cookies Recipe

With the addition of crushed pretzels to the cookie dough, these easy chocolate chip cookies are the perfect balance between salty and sweet. Bake 10 minutes for a soft and chewy cookie or up to 14 minutes for a crisp cookie.

Hot Pretzels Recipe

This recipe starts with a ball of fresh, sticky pizza dough (sometimes called "ready to bake" pizza dough) that comes in a plastic bag and is available in most major supermarkets.

Caramel-Pretzel Blondies Recipe

Blondies absolutely do have more fun. Who needs chocolate when you have the salty-sweet flavor duo of caramel and pretzels in a delicious bar cookie?

Strawberry-Pretzel Ice-Cream Pie Recipe

Salty-sweet describes the homemade ice cream that stars in this luscious Strawberry-Pretzel Ice-Cream Pie.

Sweet and Spicy Nut and Pretzel Mix Recipe

This snack mix is a great 5-star addition to the party spread.

Chocolate-Almond Pretzels Recipe

These chocolate covered pretzels make for a delicious afternoon snack.

Crisp and Spicy Snack Mix Recipe

Take this to snack on before dinner. And if there's any left, toss it on a salad.

Candy Bar Pie Recipe

Take the flavors of your favorite candy bars and transform them into a pie. With a pretzel crust carrying it all, this pie is sure to be a winner.

Popcorn Balls Recipe

This simple snack recipe offers plenty of crunch and some amazing sweet and salty flavors.

Peanut butter Haystacks Recipe

These four-ingredient snacks are so simple to make and even easier to eat.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Dipped Pretzels Recipe

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Dipped Pretzels are a  salty, sweet pick-up dessert that's just as ideal for a snack as it is for a party.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pretzel Pie Recipe

Remember that strawberry-pretzel salad that showed up at every church supper? We’ve turned it into your new favorite pie with a salty-sweet pretzel crust and added zip from rhubarb. We all love our classic desserts, but sometimes it is fun to change them up a bit and create something new. The frozen strawberries used in the traditional recipe are fine if it is the middle of winter but, since plump, fresh berries available at the Farmers’ Market, we thought they would make a delicious change to this pie.

Pb-Pretzel-Apple Bars Recipe

Sweet, salty, fruity, and crunchy, these bars truly pack a little bit of everything! Whip up a batch for your next picnic or hike, and stay fueled all day.

Pretzel Waffles with Peanut Butter Maple Syrup Sauce (a.k.a. Danger Waffles) Recipe

This recipe gets its pretzel-y taste from some nifty kitchen magic. The deep brown color and intense flavor of traditional Bavarian pretzels is achieved by, before baking, dipping the waffles in lye: a highly caustic substance made from firewood ash, useful for such things as making soap or brandishing jars of it at your opponents in your neighborhood Fight Club. 

The pH scale, which measures a substance's acidity, runs from 0 (hydrochloric acid), past the neutrality of water at 7, down to the pure alkali of 14. Lye hits the charts with a solid level of 13, which makes it no surprise that it can unclog drains, or take the blame for the existence of lutefisk.

Danger and lutefisk aside, lye has actually been used culinarily for centuries with many brilliant results. Once diluted and cooked it poses no danger; it merely accelerates the browning by helping break down some of the proteins on the surface, which also created its distinctive taste and texture. Yet even if you muster up the bravery to take a crack at baking like it’s 1699, it will likely be difficult to find the lye in the first place. Many bakers swap it out for a far more common (and safer) alkali: baking soda.

Although baking soda is an easy substitution, the pretzels it makes never have the “oomph” that lye pretzels do. It’s far too gentle make a significant dent in flavor and its comparatively mild pH of 9 results in something that tastes more like slightly soapy bread rather than a yeasty German dynamo. To get the intense flavor and dark brown crust we’re looking for, and to achieve it as quickly as possible (this is breakfast, after all), we’ll have to draw even more inspiration from Germany than just pretzels. We must develop superior engineering, coupled with a dash of their world-famous efficiency.

By cooking the baking soda dry on the stovetop, the molecules will begin to react and reorganize themselves, creating carbon dioxide and water, which will immediately evaporate as steam. This process is barely perceptible to the eye, but soon you’ll see the baking soda has decreased in volume. It’s transformed from sodium bicarbonate into sodium carbonate, which has a pH of around 11. That’s just alkaline enough to create superior flavor, but not so much so that you will be putting yourself or loved ones in mortal peril.  

This raises the question: Why bother doing all this work in the first place? How is anyone supposed to be able to function highly enough at 8 a.m. to be dealing with breakfast at all, much less danger breakfast?

Now we bring in the efficiency. Instead of a batter, you’ll be using a yeast dough inspired by Belgian Liège waffles. Make it a day ahead—you can even freeze it—and let it rest in the fridge overnight so it’s ready to go in the morning. Same goes for the supersoda, which can be stored sealed in a jar in a cupboard for damn well near forever. Most true lye pretzels are never boiled, so a quick dip in a soda bath is all they need. Truthfully you can find a reason to eat these for any meal, but breakfast is an excuse to slather them with peanut butter syrup and pretend it’s healthy. 

Note: Allow for one to two hours rising time.

Pretzel Waffles with Peanut Butter Maple Syrup Sauce

Ingredients

Allison and Matt Robicelli are the authors of the critically acclaimed cookbook Robicelli's: A Love Story, with Cupcakes and have created multiple internationally viral desserts.

Marbled Peanut and Pretzel Bark Recipe

This stunning treat couldn’t be easier to prepare, but makes for wow-worthy DIY holiday gifts. Feel free to change up the toppings to include your favorite nuts and crunchy treats—like cookie crumbles, cereal, or even potato chips. And to find even more inspired sheet pan recipes, you’ll definitely want to pick up a copy of One Sheet Eats: 100+ Delicious Recipes All Made on a Baking Sheet.

Mini Peanut Butter-Dark Chocolate Pretzel Cups Recipe

Peanut butter, pretzel, and chocolate is an unrivaled trio. The perfect balance of sweet and salty, as well as creamy and crunchy, these adorable, bite-sized desserts are sure to be a crowd pleaser. Easy to make and assemble, these indulgent dessert cups are great for cocktail parties and potlucks. This recipe can also be adapted to be served in a 9x9-inch baking pan.