Sweet and Salty Valentines

This was the first year that my family has had a "class party" for which to plan.  My daughter's class has 23 children and she wanted to give each and every one a Valentine.

We decided on chocolate covered pretzels with sprinkles. We covered the pretzels with white chocolate so that some could be pink with white sprinkles (for the girls) and the others could be white with pink sprinkles (for the boys).

I didn't have the double boiler needed for proper melting. So I used stainless steel bowls over sauce pans of boiling water. This substitution worked great and the melting of the chocolate went smoothly until I added the food coloring. I am not sure what that did to the chemistry of the chocolate, but it became very stiff.  Thankfully my mother had taught me the trick of adding shortening, as a thinner, to chocolate for dipping and coating.  

The crisco did the trick and the pretzels turned out quite well.  For added flair I put them in special pretzel bags with silver twist ties and sent her off to school with her pink basket full of goodies.