Turning Excess into Heaven!

I have always been a fan of all those food blogs, you know the ones I am talking about. You google a recipe and these close up shots of ingredients and gorgeous looking food and a story about how the recipe was made and why pop up. I also have always secretly wanted to become a baker. I love baking cookies, cakes, muffins...you name it. I think if I were not a race director I would open up a bakery. Perhaps this is why I run so much.

Any good race director will know exactly how much to buy for each event. Its an art that you learn as you go. Just enough to keep everyone happy, not enough to run out. Sometimes this is hard to do. I am from the school of thought of always over-prepare, always have more, not less. This was the case for Run Like the Wind a couple of weeks ago. It would be horrible to run out of Nutella at a trail race, its just a big no no! I also bought as if I was running it myself and I love eating a lot of stuff during long trail runs. The result was an excess of a lot of aid station food, just sitting here, calling my name.

So, I was staring at the leftovers from Run Like the Wind, thinking what am I going to do with two big Ziplocks full of pretzels and two GIANT tubs of Nutella? It really is a match made in heaven, but I needed more than simply dipping the pretzels into the tub.

So, I googled Nutella pretzel recipes and lo and behold one of those gorgeous blogs came up and I literally almost drooled and I knew what I had to do. Nutella pretzel brownies! What!? Salty, sweet, gooey, crunchy. Must bake now.

I tried do a food porn shot but my phone camera did just not do it justice. The ingredients. 

The mixing of the batter with the pretzels. I have to admit, the pretzels did get a little soggy, but so salty and good. 

The cleanup is the best part, right!? 

I wish you had smella-internet! Baking and waiting, baking and waiting!

Forgot to take a picture of the full pan before we dug in.

Sometimes I love my job! Thank you runners of Run Like the Wind for not eating all the Nutella and pretzels. Perhaps next year I will have to add a few more tubs in to the Costco cart again!! 

How many trail miles will it take to run these off? I have no idea, but probably more than our 30K!! 

Recipe from Buns in My Oven blog! Added pretzels.