It’s that time of month for another Crazy Ingredient Challenge.  With the business of the holidays I sat out during December and January and I’m glad to be back this month.

This month we were assigned Mustard and Strawberries. The challenge is to combine sweet strawberries with vinegary mustard. I decided to be liberal with the mustard ingredient and use honey mustard. Stuart wondered if strawberries could be pickled in a way to compliment yellow mustard. But I liked my idea better.

I present to you Strawberry Pretzels with Sweetened Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce.

I chose to follow Hannah’s recipe for pretzels because I could completely connect with her blog post. The trick was adding in strawberries. I was really nervous about this part. You can’t just fold them at the end of the dough making process like you would pancakes or cookies, so I added them during the kneading process and hoped for the best. I tried researching how to add fruit to pretzels and found absolutely nothing. So I tried looking for adding chocolate chips to pretzels, again nothing. I think I’m starting a trend here!!

Strawberry Pretzels with Sweetened Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce

Ingredients for Pretzels:

• 1 (1 oz) packet  active dry yeast
• 1 tsp sugar in the raw pure cane sugar
• 1 1/4 C warm water
• 2 1/2 C bread flour
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 2/3 C finely chopped strawberries
• 3 tbsp butter, melted, divided use

Ingredients for Sweetened Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce:

• 1/4 C honey mustard
• 1/2 tsp white sugar
• heaping 1/4 tsp honey

Steps:

1. In the bottom of a stand mixer gently stir together yeast, sugar, and warm water.  Let stand 5 minutes.
2. Add 1 1/2 C of flour to the yeast begin to stir with the dough hook attachment on low speed. Add 1/3 C of strawberries and stir. Add salt, remaining flour and strawberries. Mix until the dough comes together around the hook.
3. Cover and let dough rise for 1 hour, or until doubled in size.
4. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
5. Punch dough and transfer it onto a floured surface, divide into six equal parts. (I think you could even get 8 pretzels if you wanted!) Roll dough into a long snake and shape into a pretzel – do this by making a heart and twisting the ends. (see photos above)
6. Place pretzels on parchment lined cookie sheet. Brush with 2 tbsp melted butter and bake 10 minutes.
7. Turn on broiler and bake another 1-5 minutes until golden brown. Keep an eye on them, the timing will depend on your oven. Brush with remaining 1 tbsp butter and sprinkle with kosher salt.
8. Make dipping sauce by whisking all three ingredients. Serve with pretzels.

To see the other bloggers who participated in this month’s Crazy Ingredient Challenge click on the link below.