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Don’t let Valentine’s Day catch you off guard. The big things are, of course, compulsory. But it’s the little things that make the day sweet.

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Make as many nuggets as you need to say what needs to be said. Otherwise, from a servings perspective, count on about 5 per person as an hors d’oeuvre or cocktail dessert.

Ingredients

6 oz. chocolate
45 pretzels nuggets

Directions

I’m not sure you need instructions once you’ve seen the picture, but for the sake of completeness:

Dip pretzels in chocolate, place on wax paper to harden. Six ounces of chocolate is more than ample. You should just eat the leftover melted chocolate with a spoon. I’m just kidding, of course. A spoon would be so inefficient … you should use a small spatula so you can get every last bit of that delicious melted chocolate in your mouth.

However, there are three different ways to go about this.

Three Ways to Do This

1. An Easy Way: Compound chocolate

Follow package directions. You could hardly go wrong if you tried.

2. A Hard Way: Tempered chocolate

You’ll have pretzels that are beautiful, mind-blowingly delicious, and can be stored at room temperature for the remainder of their natural lives, to no ill effect. Here are some instructions. Good luck.

3.The Hardest or Maybe Easiest Way, Depending: Chocolate chips

Coating things in chocolate requires tempering. Your only choices are to reconcile yourself to that fact, or ignore it. The chocolate in chips has been modified to make it ideal for cookies. This changes its tempering properties. Tempering chocolate is already difficult. Tempering chips requires expertise. If you choose to ignore this, here’s what will happen: it will take melted chips an eternity to set up. When they finally do set up, you’ll experience fat bloom. At first, it will seem like small blemishes in the chocolate’s sheen, but eventually it will resemble something that looks like a disease, and the chocolate will also take on a dry, crumbly texture. That’s what happens to chocolate that looses its temper. However, there’s an opportunity in there. Fat bloom takes a couple of days to fully develop – although timing varies wildly according to ambient temperature and humidity. If you put your freshly made nuggets in the fridge, it will set up your chocolate before the bloom can develop. And then you should just leave the nuggets in there. (If your valentine spots the pretzels in the fridge and asks you why you stashed them away in there, do not mention “to ward off fat bloom,” lest you be misinterpreted.) Take them out only when you’re ready to serve them. They’ll come to room temperature almost immediately. At that point, you’ll have about six hours for the bloom to become apparent. That’s probably plenty of time for them to serve their purpose. Toss the leftover ones in the freezer and gnaw on them when no one’s looking.  Considering that you probably have some badass Ghirardelli chips in your cupboard, the chips option becomes a temptingly easy and convenient.

If your hope is to score V-Day points, my instinct says save your effort. Go with the chocolate chips, and spend the time you would’ve used to temper some chocolate, to turn your living room in a recreation of the final scene in “An Affair to Remember.” Or something from “50 Shades of Grey.”

If necessary, you can encrypt your message.

Nothing Says “I Love You” Like Chocolate-Dipped Pretzel Nuggets

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