Carmel Corn

We decorated our Christmas Tree tonight for family night, so I tried making something that I've never tried before-Carmel Corn. It was pretty easy. It worried me when I found the recipe in the Candy section of the Betty Crocker Cookbook. I don't consider myself adept enough to make candy. All of that exact temperature, etc. is too much pressure. But this was pretty simple. My kids loved it, and it was a good family night treat. (Cheap too.) If you have any left over, store it in an air-tight container.

Ingredients:

7-8 cups popped popcorn*
3/4 cups packed brown sugar
6 TBSP butter
3 TBSP light corn syrup
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

Grease a sheet pan with cooking spray or butter. (I covered mine with aluminum foil and then greased the foil.) Pour popcorn onto sheet pan and spread out. Heat oven to 300 F.
In medium saucepan, combine brown sugar, butter, and corn syrup. Over medium heat, stir until it begins to boil. Stop stirring and allow to gently boil for 5 minutes undisturbed. Remove from heat, and stir in soda and vanilla. Drizzle over popcorn and stir gently. Bake in oven for 15 minutes. Remove and stir gently. Bake in oven an additional 5 minutes. Stir gently to make sure popcorn is evenly coated. Transfer to cold sheet pan covered with aluminum foil and cooking spray. Allow to cool before eating!

*You can use any kind of popcorn you like. I was out of microwave popcorn, and I don't own an air-popper, so I heated some oil in the bottom of my big pot until it was about 350 F. (At this temperature the oil moves more like water. It doesn't look thick like oil.) Then I added 1/2 cup of unpopped, popcorn. I covered the pot with aluminum foil and continued to move the pan until the popping was almost done. Then I transferred it to a large bowl. I was amazed at how few unpopped-kernals I found. 1/2 cup made about 10 cups of popcorn. So I think for this recipe you could get away with 1/3 cup.