Yes I know that barks and brittle’s are often associated with the holidays, but this is football season and what sports fan doesn’t want to accompany a game with pretzel, peanuts and chocolate?  We want to post some game day recipes for you as the Super-bowl approaches, not that we will necessarily be watching that game, but you can bet we will be eating our Chocolate Peanut Pretzel Brittle as we cheer for our champion Golden State Warriors! Making candy is sometimes tricky, but this recipe was so easy and such a perfect crunchy, sweet, salty plus chocolate combo.  The one thing to remember when making candy is have all your ingredients out and measured and then you just go step by step and in a few minutes you have a game day treat that will make your hot wings and bag chips feel really bad about themselves.

1 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup (you can also use golden syrup)
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup broken-up chunks of thin salted pretzels
3/4 cup roasted salted peanuts
3/4 to 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1. Either grease a large cookie sheet or line it with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Remember to get all of your other ingredients ready; you’re going to need to add them quickly in a few minutes, and you won’t have time to hunt and measure.
2. Combine sugar, corn syrup and water in a medium saucepan, stirring just until sugar is wet. Attach a candy thermometer and heat over medium-high heat, without stirring, until mixture reaches between 300 and 305 degrees F. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, you’re looking for a small amount of the mixture dropped into cold water to separate into hard, brittle threads. This takes exactly 9 minutes on my stove.
3. Remove from heat and quickly stir in butter (until it melts), baking soda, peanuts and pretzels until all are coated. Pour quickly out onto prepared pan. Use a spatula or, even better, two forks to pull and stretch the mixture as flat as you can get it, working quickly. Sprinkle with chocolate chips and let rest for 5 minutes so that they soften. Once they are all soft, use a spatula to spread them over the brittle.
4. If you don’t want to wait for them to cool put them directly in the freezer for 20 minutes, after which point the chocolate is firm, the base is cold and you can bash the brittle into bite-sized chunks. It works best to lift your brittle up on the site and use an object to break it up as using hands would make a big chocolately mess.
5. Keeps for a good week or so in an airtight container.

Recipe – Smitten Kitchen 2016 Chocolate Peanut and Pretzel Brittle