Jungle Animal Pretzel Pops

Embrace your wild side and make these Jungle Animal Pretzel Pops! These treats are so much fun to make with your kids and create their favorite animal!

I've gone wild decorating these Chocolate Pretzel Jungle Animals. I'll admit that most of my edible craft projects are incredibly fun for me to create, but turning ordinary chocolate-dipped pretzel rods into animals has made me downright giddy.

Earlier this week, I decorated some Farm Animal Pretzels using modeling chocolate, and they were cute, really cute, actually. My Farm Animal Pretzels were inspired by Crafts by Amanda's adorably decorated craft sticks. The designs were pretty simple.

With my jungle animals, I decided to kick it up a notch and add a bit more detail. I went a little nuts with the elephant, but all that detail was worth it. He is my absolute favorite design, so far, anyway!

I had just finished making the lion and tiger when my exchange student came home from school.

She was excited to try her hand at designing a pretzel animal and she created the giraffe. It's fantastic, isn't it?

Each animal took me between ten to twenty minutes to design and as simple as the hippo looks, it took the most effort. At first, I just couldn't get the nose to look right. I think I finally got it. You can tell just how much I love the elephant based on the number of pictures I took of it.

My exchange student and I have already made several more to share with you, most of which are much simpler than this herd of jungle animals.

Jungle Animal Pretzel Pops

Before you begin, you can use candies like Tootsie Rolls, salt water taffy, Laffy Taffy, Airheads, or Starburst Fruit Chews to create the decorations, but with these designs, I highly recommend using modeling chocolate (recipe here.). You can make one batch of white modeling chocolate and add coloring to each design.

Tip

To keep the chocolate from cracking on your pretzels. Chocolate shrinks as it cools and when it shrinks onto something hard, it usually cracks. If you take the pretzels out of the bag and allow them to sit at room temperature for several hours or overnight they will soften just enough to keep this from happening, but not enough to become stale.

Ingredients

• melted and tempered white and milk chocolate OR melted white or light cocoa confectionery coating/candy melts
• pretzel rods
• candy eyes or black edible pearls
• homemade modeling chocolate (or candies like Tootsie Rolls, Laffy Taffy, Airheads, Starbust, etc.)
• candy coloring
• black and brown food coloring markers

Supplies

• baking pans lined with parchment paper
• tweezers (used for food only)
• kitchen shears or knife
• optional: rolling pin, small metal cutters

Instructions

Either dip your pretzels into the melted and tempered pure chocolate or melted confectionery coating/candy melts or spoon it over the surface of the pretzel, leaving the tip you are holding, uncovered.

Shake off excess chocolate before setting the dipped pretzels on your parchment paper-lined baking pans. If using pure chocolate, one coat will probably be sufficient to cover the pretzel rods. If using confectionery coating/candy melts, you might want to put on two coats.

Refrigerate if using pure chocolate, and freeze if using candy coating just until set. If freezing, it will only take about 3-4 minutes. Don't leave them in too long or the candy coating will crack.

If you are making an entire zoo full of different animals and are using confectionery coating/candy melts, you might want to consider using an electric skillet to keep small bowls of colored candy coating melted. For detailed instructions, see my Chocolate Making Tips page.

Decorate your pretzels using modeling chocolate or assorted candy.

You can either pinch off pieces of the modeling chocolate or candy and shape them into ears, spots, manes, noses, trunks, etc., or roll the modeling chocolate or candy out using a rolling pin and then cut using small metal cutters or kitchen shears.

I did a combination of the techniques. Then use melted chocolate as "glue" to attach the candy to the chocolate-dipped pretzels. You can use corn syrup to attach pieces of modeling chocolate to other pieces of modeling chocolate, like when adding the nose to the lion's face.

Elephant

dip the pretzel rod in grey candy melts

2 black edible pearls - eyes

 ears and trunk from grey modeling chocolate
tusk from white modeling chocolate

Zebra

dip a pretzel in white

2 candy eyes

snout and ears from white modeling chocolate or salt water taffy or Airheads
mane from black modeling chocolate or Tootsie Rolls or black salt water taffy

draw on the nose using a black food coloring marker

Lion

dip pretzel in yellow/orange

2 candy eyes

face and ears from yellow modeling chocolate, Lemon Tootsie Rolls or yellow taffy

mane from orange modeling chocolate, or Orange Air Heads, Starburst, or orange taffy
nose from brown modeling chocolate or chocolate salt water taffy

Monkey

dip pretzel rod in milk chocolate

2 candy eyes

face and ears from brown modeling chocolate or chocolate taffy
nose and fur in ears from tan-colored modeling chocolate or caramels
use a black food coloring marker to draw on the nose and smile

 Giraffe

dip pretzel rod in yellow/orange

2 candy eyes

 ears and face from yellow modeling chocolate or Lemon Tootsie Rolls or yellow taffy
snout, antlers, and spots from brown modeling chocolate or Tootsie Rolls or chocolate taffy
draw spots on the face using a brown food coloring marker

Tiger

dip pretzel rod in orange

2 candy eyes

 ears and face from orange modeling chocolate or Orange Airheads, Starburst, or orange taffy
snout from white modeling chocolate or Vanilla Tootsie Rolls or Airheads
nose from black modeling chocolate, chocolate Tootsie Roll, or chocolate Taffy
draw stripes on the face and pretzel using a black food coloring marker

Hippo

2 black edible pearls - eyes
head and ears from grey modeling chocolate
nose from light grey modeling chocolate
teeth from white modeling chocolate or Vanilla Tootsie Rolls
make indentations for the nose using the back end of a skewer, and use the point to make the spots

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Beth Klosterboer

Hi, I'm Beth Klosterboer, a professional chocolatier & baker, cookbook author, and event planner. I love sharing recipes for happy occasions here on Hungry Happenings. I also create easy fudge recipes to share at HowToMakeEasyFudge.com, rice krispie treat recipes at HowToMakeCerealTreats.com, and easy cookie recipes at HowToMakeEasyCookies.com

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