Chocolate-Pretzel Clusters

Another delicious recipe that I found & wanted to share.  These clusters have pretzels, dried cranberries, & almonds, all covered in chocolate.  They are sweet, salty, chocolaty, and they are less than 100 calories.  I found the recipe in a Family Circle magazine, so I looked it up online, so that I can share it with everyone.  You can find the recipe here.

Since I do not like almonds, but my brother does, I split the recipe up and used different types of nuts.  For the almonds and cashews, I used a 1/4 of what the recipe called for, and for the pistachios, I used a 1/2 of what the recipe called for.  So, when you look at the recipe, for the almonds and cashews, I divided every ingredient by 4, and for the pistachios, I divided every ingredient by 2.  My nutritional values are listed below for each type of cluster that I made, and I rounded each value up to the nearest whole number.

ALMONDS (14 clusters) (Nutritional Info per cluster)

*Calories - 66

*Fat - 4 g

*Carb - 8 g

*Sugar - 4 g

*Protein - 1 g

CASHEWS (12 clusters) (Nutritional Info per cluster)

*Calories - 73

*Fat - 4 g

*Carb - 9 g

*Sugar - 5 g

*Protein - 1 g

Pistachio (20 clusters) (Nutritional Info per cluster)

*Calories - 70

*Fat - 4 g

*Carb - 10 g

*Sugar - 6 g

*Protein - 1 g

So, if you have a sweet tooth, but you are trying to lose weight and stay on track, give these clusters a try.  One or two clusters can satisfy the sweet tooth, without breaking the calorie bank or throwing your weight loss of track.