salted caramel popcorn

Happy Halloween! In the spirit of this sugar filled day, I thought I would pass along a sweet snack that you can munch on while handing out candy to the kiddies.

After seeing the beautiful Lauren Elan instagram a photo after trying this recipe for salted caramel popcorn that she had found on pinterest recently, I just had to try it myself. It looked easy enough and caramel corn is one of my favourite treats. 

My finished product looks a little different than the photo that comes along side the Cookies & Cups recipe but isn't that always the case?

The recipe calls for 16 cups popcorn but I used a bag of microwave popcorn (I'm lazy) and that equated to about 8 cups of popcorn so I cut the recipe in half.

*confession* I attempted this recipe twice. The first time I cut down on the butter (because I'm healthy, obviously) and had baked it for only 20 minutes of the suggested 30 when it burnt. I blamed the lack of butter. The second time I made the recipe properly but baked only half of the batch at a time. The first batch burnt after 20 minutes. The popcorn photographed is the second half of that second batch and it only baked for 15 minutes. I have no idea why it was burning, perhaps it was just my oven? I will play around with temperatures as I continue to make this recipe because we both know I will be making it a LOT.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unpopped popcorn kernels (about 16 cups popped corn)
• 1 cup salted butter
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/3 cup light corn syrup
• 1 1/2 - 2 tsp kosher or sea salt, divided

How to Make

1. Preheat oven to 300°
2. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Set aside.
3. Pop popcorn kernels using air popper into a large bowl.
4. In a small saucepan melt butter, brown sugar, corn syrup and 1 tsp salt together over medium heat. Bring to boil. Boil for 4 minutes without stirring.
5. Pour caramel mixture over popcorn and stir to coat evenly.
6. Pour popcorn into lined pan, sprinkle remaining salt on top (1/2 tsp - 1 tsp depending on your personal taste preference) and place in oven. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.
7. Allow popcorn to cool on a parchment lined counter.

Let me know if you tried it! Enjoy!