Easy To Make Old Fashion Popcorn Balls

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Last night Stella had a sleepover at her friend Mateo’s.  Usually when Mateo sleeps over here we all make pizza together – so why would Mateo think that I would not come to his house and make pizza there for them?  A night alone is a treasure for me and the last thing that I wanted to do was go over to his house and make dinner.  Instead Stella and I decided to make popcorn balls for a treat for when they watched their movie.  This was a first for both of us – but we had a lot of fun and I think we will most definitely be doing this again and experimenting with the coating.

Old Fashioned Popcorn Balls

Ingredients

1/4 cup popcorn
2 Tbl oil (olive or coconut)
1/4 cup butter
1/2 tsp salt (only if butter is unsalted)
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup light corn syrup (we used a combination of corn syrup, molasses and honey)
1/3 cup water

1. Place popcorn and oil in a popcorn maker – I use a whirley bird and LOVE it! Pop your corn.

2. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

3. When the popcorn is done transfer to a baking pan and place in the oven.

4. Combine the butter, salt, sugar, corn syrup and water into a sauce pan.  Cook on medium heat – stirring until it boils.  Once it boils stop stirring and let the syrup cook.  The syrup needs to reach 270 degrees – if you do not have a thermometer – you can drop a spoonful of the syrup into a cup of cold water – if the syrup turns into hard, stringy looking pieces you are good to go. Stella mis-read the ingredients to me and I ended up putting 1 cup of water in – so it took much longer to cook and get to temperature.  I could not find my thermometer so I used the water trick – not sure if  you can see it in the photo.

5. Turn the heat off for the syrup and take the popcorn out of the oven.  Pour or ladle the syrup over the popcorn – mixing as you go.  You want all the popcorn to be covered with the syrup.

6.  Allow the popcorn and syrup to cool – so that you can handle.  Butter your hands and start forming your popcorn balls.  Place them on wax paper.  Should make about 10 or so good sized popcorn balls.  I then wrapped them individually and sent them with Stella – they were delicious!

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