Caramel Corn

 I love caramel corn.  Sweet.  Crunchy.  Caramelly.  What’s not to love?

 I’ve been making lots of goodies for the holidays.  And this caramel corn has made it into the rotation this year. 

Bonus,  it’s gluten-free!, so my gluten-free friends can partake without worrying. 

 

I actually had this as one of the desserts/sweets for when we had friends over on New Year’s Eve. 

This recipe comes from King Arthur Flour.  I discovered them a few years ago, and I love to browse their recipes and you can check them out here.  When I found this recipe it was called Carol’s Caramel Corn, but I don’t know Carol (I’m sure she’s lovely.) so it’s just Caramel Corn to me. 

When I make this recipe I usually double it.  And it makes a lot when you double it, but believe me my family will go through a double batch of this corn in about a day and a half.  If I just make a single batch, it will disappear before the night is over.

This caramel corn is so good.  It’s very, very, very hard to resist.

Trust me.  I know from experience.

 

Here’s the step by step for how you make this delicious caramel corn:

First, pop your corn and pick out all the unpopped kernels.  (I used an air popper, but you can pop your corn in the microwave in a large bowl with a plate placed on top.)  I just spread out the popped corn on a half sheet pan and put the popped kernels in a large bowl and toss the unpopped kernels you find.  You don’t want anybody chomping down on an unpopped kernel and breaking a tooth. 

This is how much corn I used for a double batch. You have to have a really, really big bowl.  I think this is a party tub we got from Wal-Mart one year.  This is about 30-32 cups of popped popcorn (enough for a double batch).

 Next, Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.  Yes, you read that right.  It’s not a  typo.  Put your oven on 200 degrees.  Your corn will need to bake for a while at this low temperature. 

Now that that’s done.  Combine the molasses, brown sugar, butter and corn syrup in a medium saucepan.  Not the baking soda.  We’ll use it here in a few minutes.

Cook this mixture over medium heat until the sugar dissolves.  Then, let it come to a boil and boil the mixture for 5 minutes.  Stir occasionally while it’s boiling.  The mixture will darken just a little bit.

 At the end of the 5 minutes, remove the mixture from the heat and stir in the baking soda.  It will foam up quite a bit. 

Now Listen!, you’ve got to work very quickly (and carefully) to get the corn coated with the caramel mixture before it starts to set up. 

 Stir really well to get it all coated.    Here’s the corn after it was coated with the caramel mixture.

Spread the hot, caramel coated corn onto a couple of baking sheets lined with a Silpat or parchment paper.

  These sheet pans were kinda full since I was doing a double batch and I only had two racks for the oven, so I only had room enough for two baking sheets.  But, if you have more racks in your oven and more baking sheets you might want to spread the corn out over more baking sheets.  For a single batch, two baking sheets will be fine.  It will do okay either way, whether it’s  a double batch kinda piled up over two baking sheets or a single batch spread out over two baking sheets, but just know that it’s a little more work to stir the corn well, when there is more on the baking sheet. 

This corn will have a baking time of 1 hour.  It needs to be taken out and stirred every 15 minutes during that 1 hour. 

When I go to stir the corn, sometimes I come across hunks of caramel corn like this one, where a few pieces of caramel corn are stuck together.  I just pull them apart with clean hands.  Truth be told, clean hands are my best tools when doing this, because it’s just easier to get it all stirred with your hands instead of a spatula, if you can take the heat, that is, because this corn is pretty warm at 200 degrees.  So be careful, and just use a spatula if you feel like it is too hot to handle. 

Right before the corn gets done cooking, I put a couple long strips of waxed paper on our table to spread the corn out on to cool.  After the hour cooking time is up, remove the corn from the oven and stir well.  Pull apart any big hunks of corn you come to.  Spread the caramel corn out on the waxed paper to cool. You can eat this straight from the oven, but it will be stickier than if you let it cool.  Let the corn cool for a good 30 minutes, then enjoy your sweet snack.

Store this corn in an airtight container.  We store our corn in gallon zip top bags.  It made a lot of corn as you can see.  It almost wouldn’t fit on my little table. 

 Happy Snacking!