On New Year’s Day, I made a big batch of caramel popcorn and played card games with my parents. At 92 and 96, I’m not sure how many more holidays I’ll get to celebrate with them.
As I made the caramel popcorn, my thoughts flew back to my childhood.
During the holidays, my dad would pop a large batch of popcorn, and we’d make popcorn balls. We’d laugh as we coated our hands with butter to keep the hot candy mixture from burning our hands while we smashed the popcorn into balls.
Making caramel popcorn is much easier! No burned hands. (Unless you forget the roasting pan is hot and you grab it—not saying I did such a thing. 😉)
Times change and our tastes change. We don’t make popcorn balls any longer. And it’s difficult for my dad to stand to pop the popcorn or pour the candy mixture over the hot popcorn.
But the memories remain.
If you’d like to make this caramel popcorn, here’s the recipe. It’s from the Betty Crocker Cookbook. I popped about 2 cups of popcorn kernels to fill the roasting pan using an air popper, then because we love caramel popcorn, I quadrupled the batch. It might last us a week!
Enjoy!
Caramel Popcorn
Makes about 9 cups
Ingredients:
8 cups popped popcorn (about 1/3 to 1/2 cup unpopped)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup butter
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon vanilla (real tastes much better than imitation!)
Preheat oven to 300˚
Remove all unpopped kernels from popped corn. Place is a greased 17x12x2-inch baking pan and put in 300 degree oven to keep warm while making the candy mixture.
Butter the sides of a heavy 1-1/2-quart saucepan. In the saucepan, combine brown sugar, butter, and corn syrup. Cook and stir over medium heat to boiling. Clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan. Cook and stir over medium heat to 255, hard-ball stage.
Remove saucepan from heat and stir in baking soda and vanilla. The mixture will turn foamy.
Carefully pour over the warm popcorn, stirring to coat the popcorn. [It’s helpful to have 2 people if you’re making a large batch. One to pour and one to stir. Add the candy in stages to completely coat all the popcorn.]
Bake in 300˚ oven for 15 minutes; stir and bake another 5 minutes. Transfer popcorn mixture to a large piece of foil [or your clean counter top], break into clusters and cool completely. Store tightly covered.
You can add 1-1/2 cups nuts of your choice (peanuts, walnut halves, pecan halves, cashews) to the popcorn-candy mixture before baking.