Recipe #62 - Cinnamon Bun Caramel Corn

Since I teach youth theater, sometimes I get the most random songs stuck in my head for months at a time.  Lately its been Christmas music.  It started in September when we began rehearsing for our December show.  You know that crazy lady had Target who is absentmindedly humming "Nuttin' for Christmas" while shopping for back to school supplies with 3 naughty kids?  That's me. 

So when I made this recipe, it didn't surprise me that that I started humming Christmas tunes.  But then it dawned on me, this popcorn tastes like a little Christmas package for my tongue.  Cinnamon and caramel together?  Christmas.  A DELICIOUS Christmas.  In my belly.

You can find this recipe on page 257 or online using this link.

Start by popping some popcorn.  You can break out your air popper or use a natural-style microwave popcorn.  Or you can try my magical trick.  You need these three items.

A lunch sack, masking tape, and popcorn.  Put a 1/4 cup popcorn in the bag.  Fold over the top slightly and tape it shut.

Lay it down in your microwave and pop it for as long as it typically takes your microwave to pop a standard bag of microwave popcorn.  And wallah!  Air popped popcorn without needing to dig the popper out of the bottom of your pantry and dust it before using it.

You'll need to do this twice for this recipe to get the amount of popcorn you need.  You can even reuse the bag and tape.  Just refill the popcorn.

Make sure that the unpopped kernels get removed and put all the popcorn in a large bowl.

 Add the "roughly" chopped pecans.

In a separate bowl, you mix together the cinnamon and brown sugar.  (This is sort of when the Christmas songs will begin to enter your brain.  Just warning you.)

Then you slice up a stick of butter and put it on top of the brown sugar mix.

Then you'll feel your jeans getting a little snugger (Is that a word?  If so, its a weird one and I just used it.  Then I repeated it in my head several times to decide if it was a real word.  Then I left it in my sentence and moved on.) as you add the corn syrup to your butter and brown sugar.

Then you pop this in the microwave to get it all melted.  Next you add the baking soda and vanilla to finalize the caramel.

Quickly pour it over the popcorn and pecans.

Stir until its all mixed up.

Then pour it into a foil-lined jelly roll pan and bake it for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.  This is the point where you catch up on the last half of The X Factor.  Oh...maybe that was just me.  I think you can ignore those instructions.

After 30 minutes, pour the popcorn out onto some wax paper or parchment paper and drizzle with the melted white chocolate.

So...while I was doing this, I saw a blob of white chocolate on the back of my hand and I, of course, licked it off.  Except that it wasn't white chocolate.  It was liquid hand soap.  Yeah, not my finest cooking moment. 

Once the chocolate hardens you just break this stuff up and inhale it.  I made it with the intention of giving some of it away.  Not sure it will last long enough.  Merry Christmas!