Recipe: Chocolate Pretzels

Makes about 3 dozen cookies

- 1/2 cup butter, softened

- 7 tablespoons superfine sugar

- 1 egg

- 2 cups flour

- ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa

Chocolate glaze:

- 1 tablespoon butter

- 3 ½ ounces dark chocolate (semisweet)

- Powdered sugar for dusting

1. To make cookies: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease cookie sheets and set aside.

2. Beat together butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in egg. Sift together flour and cocoa; gradually beat into butter mixture to form a dough. Use your fingers to incorporate the last of the flour and bring the dough together. Chill 15 minutes.

3. Break small pieces from the dough and roll into thin sausage shapes about 4 inches long and ¼ inch thick. Twist into pretzel shapes by first making a circle and then twisting or pinching ends around each other to form a letter B. (If the dough cracks when the pretzel is formed, roll the pieces between your palms to warm a little, then shape.)

4. Place pretzels on the prepared cookie sheet, slightly spaced apart to allow room for spreading. Bake in preheated oven 8 to 12 minutes. Let pretzels cool slightly on the cookie sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

5. To make glaze: Melt butter and chocolate in a double boiler, stirring to combine. Dip half of each pretzel into chocolate and allow excess to drip back into bowl. Place pretzels on a sheet of baking parchment and let set. Dust with powdered sugar.

From "Cookshelf: Chocolate" by Jacqueline Bellefontaine, submitted by Peter and Ingrid Smith