Salted Caramel Corn

I apologize in advance for this recipe.  It’s crack in a bowl.  And it’s not good for you.  Bad combo, but oh so good. I love this stuff!

My sister-in-law gave us a fun air popcorn popper for Christmas, and I’ve been having fun making all sorts of yummy popcorn variations but this one takes the cake.  First you pop up a bunch of plain popcorn (I used 1.5 cups of kernels for this recipe).  If you don’t have an air popper, just get a plain brown paper bag, put your kernels in it, fold over the top and stick it in the microwave – no need to use that nasty microwave popcorn you get from the store!

While your popcorn is popping, you’ll need to get everything else ready. First turn on your oven to 350* and get out two cookie sheets.  Next, you’ll need to make the caramel sauce.  You’ll need 1 stick of butter, 2 cups of brown sugar, 1/2 cup of light corn syrup, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon of baking soda.

Oh, and I almost forgot – 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.  I make my own, but I keep it in an old vanilla bottle from the store.

You get all the ingredients into a sauce pan and heat them over medium high heat for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

Once the sauce is done, you’ll spread your popcorn on your two cookie sheets and drizzle half the sauce over each cookie sheet.

Next, you use two spatulas to toss the popcorn and the caramel sauce together.  It will clump and be a little tricky, but don’t worry, just do the best you can.

Once you’ve got it pretty well mixed, stick the cookie sheets into the oven for 5 minutes.  When you take them out after 5 minutes, toss the popcorn again and it will be much easier and the caramel will easily spread over all of the popcorn.

Next up – eat it.  Hopefully not all in one sitting, but that’s gonna be hard.  Enjoy!