Friends. I’m telling you this mixture is ADDICTING. It’s chocolate covered bugles, ranch flavored popcorn, ranch Doritos, Chex and pretzels drizzled with chocolate and M&Ms. Trust me, this will be a hit in your snack display of holidays delights! Also I’ve included this in the Handmade Holidays series because you can bag up this mixure and give as a gift!
I always start out by getting my Christmas trees or Santa Hats ready. These are the Bugles dipped in colored white chocolate and placed on wax paper. This year when making this batch I forgot to get plain white chocolate so I only made Christmas trees. But to make Santa hats you’ll dip and cover your Bugle in red chocolate. Let it harden and then dip each end into melted white chocolate to create a white pom pom at the top of the hat and white trim at the bottom!
Follow the instructions for the melting chocolate that you find on the bag or package. For color chocolates like what I used I do recommend getting the already colored chocolate. I’m able to find these at my grocery store and also find them at the craft store. The bag will probably also warn against this but be sure to not burn the chocolate!
While the chocolate is still wet be sure to sprinkle with your sprinkles, so your trees are trimmed!
I mostly made this batch of Santa Party Mix for this post since it’s a little earlier than I usually make it. I like to make it a day to a few days before people will be consuming it so the popcorn can be fresh and nothing ends up stale. So I decided to make this a “small” batch but in the end it was a mostly normal batch, I just didn’t make as many Christmas tree Bugles as I usually do. I also didn’t make as much of the pretzel/chex cereal drizzled in chocolate combo either.
Set that pan aside and either get a new one and another sheet of wax paper down, or if your bugles are hardened you can go ahead and place them in a bowl. I personally waited a few extra minutes and was able to put the Christmas trees I made into a bowl because the chocolate had hardened.
On your wax paper go ahead and get a mixture of pretzels and chex onto the pan and with your melted chocolate drizzle over your mixure! Don’t worry if it is too thin or too thick in any spot, it’ll all end up delicious!
Once you’re done with drizzling you can set your pan aside OR you can go ahead and place it in the freezer for a few minutes to speed up the process for the chocolate to harden.
Next you’ll need to get your popcorn ready! For a big batch I do like to use my air popper, but you can use microwave popcorn too! For this batch I did just one bag of microwave popcorn – it was 97% fat free but I do add butter and the ranch flavoring afterwards.
Now it’s just a matter of putting all of your ingredients into one container! I like to layer everything in so there’s always that mix going on while you’re eating!
I like to layer by going: Popcorn, Doritos, pretzels/Chex, Bugles, M&Ms, repeat!
It’s really an easy recipe and also easy to sub in other ingredients! I use to also add peanuts but now that 3 out of 5 of my nieces and nephews are allergic I definitely don’t add it!
Only one more day in our Handmade Holiday series for this season! I hope you guys have been enjoying these posts! See you tomorrow!
xoxo
-Robin
Started making this and decided I have awful patience! I made 40 chocolate covered bugles and decided it would be enough for me. Instead of chex cereal I am using cherrios because that is what I had! With my popcorn I might use 2 bags of kettle flavored microwave popcorn instead of my air popper but I do also really enjoy the ranch flavor popcorn with the ranch flavored doritos. 😄
Mmm! Yeah I love mixing up the flavors of the popcorn too! That’s what is so great about this recipe is you can basically sub in and out any ingredient and it’s still yummy!