Tasty Tuesday – Caramel Corn

***I know it’s not Tuesday, but my printer just kicked it. Now the post I was planning on for today had to be swapped with the one for tomorrow. No big deal, but I just seem to be a magnet for this kinda stuff lately!***

Over the weekend we did a bit of experimenting with a hot air popcorn popper. But, after you have a garland long enough to wrap around the whole house, what do you do with the extra popcorn? Why not make caramel corn?

This is the crispy coated kind that melts on your tongue!

I won’t lie. I was a little intimidated by the whole process and didn’t really expect it to turn out very well. (Lets just say homemade caramel and I have a track record, and it isn’t a very good one ; ) Happily, everything turned out great, and I will also probably be gaining 5 pounds just from the amount of corn I ate this weekend!

I used this recipe, and as long as you follow the directions you shouldn’t have any problem.
A few suggestions…
– 5 quarts of popped corn is roughly 2/3 cup of un-popped kernels. 1½ gallon ziploc bags when finished.
– Go ahead and half the butter if you want to be more “healthy”. I used 3/4 cup and things went fine.
– Use a large roasting pan lined with foil for super easy mixing and clean up.
– Keep the popped corn warm in the oven while you make the caramel. It will make mixing much easier!
– Don’t freak out when the baking soda makes the caramel foam.
– You only need 45 min. in the oven.

Just added the baking soda and immediately ran to check that I had used baking soda and not baking powder. Major dork moment right there!

This is definitely a much better use of the popcorn than a garland, and I don’t know many people who wouldn’t enjoy it as a gift either. Good thing I still have a bag and a half worth of kernels to pop!

P.S. For those of you who are lucky enough to have had Fisher’s popcorn from the boardwalk in Ocean City, MD this is a pretty good substitute when you just can’t make it to the beach!