Caramel Corn

Mmmm! Caramel corn! I've never homemade it before, but I ate it homemade as a kid and loved it! So when I stumbled upon a recipe this week I knew I just had to try it in celebration of Halloween week! It just seems to be a fall food to me for some reason! So, if you think that your kids aren't going to get enough candy and sugar tomorrow night, you should whip up a warm batch of this for them to munch on before they go out trick or treating!

Ingredients...

...5 quarts popped, plain popcorn (this equals to about 3 bags of microwave or 1/2 cup unpopped kernels)
...1/2 cup butter
...2 cups brown sugar
...1/2 cup corn syrup
...1 tsp. salt
...1/2 tsp. baking soda
...1 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions...

Pop popcorn and place in two 9x13 inch pans. In a medium saucepan, melt butter. Once melted, stir in brown sugar, corn syrup and salt. Bring mixture to a boil, stirring constantly. Once the mixture starts boiling, let boil for 4 minutes, without stirring. Remove from heat and stir in baking soda and vanilla. Pour in a steady, thin stream over the popcorn. Stir to coat popcorn. Place in preheated oven at 250 for 30-45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. Let cool and then break up and store in an airtight container.

Popcorn Cake

It's hot here. Really, really hot here. And me being the fr

ugal (crazed?) person that I am...we haven't turned on the air conditioning yet. Yep. We're crazy...

I wanted to make a cake. But that requires turning on the oven...which makes our kitchen feel like a bizzilion and one degrees instead of the normal million degrees :) So I found this recipe, which was really good and required no extra heating of the kitchen...

The Ingredients...

...18 cups popped popcorn
...1 bag marshmallows
...1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
...1/2 bag of chocolate chips

Directions...

Pop popcorn and place in large bowl. Melt butter and marshmallows together and stir into popcorn. Once everything is mixed well, add chocolate chips. Press into greased angel food or bundt cake pan and let cool. Turn onto plate and enjoy!

My Thoughts...

This was a painless, heatless treat...and it was good! It was basically a really giant popcorn ball, but in cake form. I will definetely be making this again...it was delicious!

For more delicious recipes, check out Tasty Tuesday over at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam!