| Prep Time | 20 minutes |
| Cook Time | 30 minutes |
| Servings |
10+
|
Ingredients
Set aside:
- 10 cups Popped popcorn
First set of ingredients:
- 1-1/2 cups sugar
- 1/2 cup light corn syrup
- 1 Tbsp water
- 2 Tbsp Butter
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
Second set of ingredients
- 1 drop blue food coloring gel
- 4-6 drops yellow food coloring gel
- 2 tsp concentrated oil candy flavor, green apple
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp citric acid
Ingredients
Set aside:
First set of ingredients:
Second set of ingredients
|
|
Instructions
Before you start:
- Get all of your ingredients ready. Once the mixture is hot enough to add the food coloring, flavor oil, and baking soda, you will need to move fast and have everything already measured out and ready to go. You also need to have your popcorn in some kind of metal bowl or cookie sheet(s) so you can pour the hot sugar mixture on to it. I use a giant stainless steel bowl that is 18" round by 6" deep, and it works great! It fits in to the oven and I can stir it around without anything spilling. Keep in mind that you need to be really careful with the hot sugar mixture (aka molten lava) to avoid a serious burn.
In a medium/large saucepan:
- Add all ingredients from the first group of ingredients. Just toss everything in. It doesn't need to look pretty! Note: I use a thick-bottomed saucepan, and it helps evenly distribute the heat to avoid any scorching. If you only have a cheaper thin-bottomed pan, no worries. Just stir the mixture more frequently while it is cooking. Stir everything up with a spoon first. If you use a whisk too soon all of your ingredients will get stuck inside the whisk and be a real pain to get out. Switch to a whisk and turn on the heat to medium-high.
- You don't need to stir the mix constantly, but give it a good stir with a whisk every 30-60 seconds or so to avoid scorching. As soon as it starts to boil/simmer, immediately turn the heat down to medium. Now is the time to put in your candy thermometer. At this point I do not stir anymore. Keep a close watch, and immediately remove the pan from the heat/burner once it reaches 250°F.
Once off of the heat:
- Add the food coloring and flavoring oil; whisk together thoroughly. Add the baking soda and citric acid; whisk them in. Throughout these additions, the mixture will bubble up a bit and get foamy. The color appears lighter at this point also. Note: the bubbling and foaming is why you need to use a a deeper saucepan than seems unnecessary when you first start cooking. Safety first!
- (Red pictured only, sorry!) Immediately pour the sugary mixture over your popcorn. Just dump in on in any fashion! Scrape everything out of the pan that you can, but don't take too much time here. I have not melted a rubber spatula with this recipe, but I suppose it is possible. So to avoid ruining equipment, I have been using a silicone spatula I use for pancakes and eggs and it works great. Carefully stir and press the popcorn in to the sugary mix.
- Once you get it mixed up, put the whole thing in to a 250°F oven for 30 minutes. Remove every 15 minutes and stir it up again. The candy will be very soft and you will be able to coat the popcorn more thoroughly each time. I press the spatula in to the mix pretty hard and try to really coat each piece of popcorn during these intervals. When it becomes harder to stir and less sticky, it is done.
- Remove the candy popcorn from the oven, give it a quick stir, and carefully dump it out on to a heat-resistant surface. Use your spatula and flatten out the mixture. I like to get it pretty flat; 1-2 popcorn kernels deep is ideal. It will break up in to smaller chunks better this way. Let it cool for about 15 minutes and you are ready to chow down!
Recipe Notes
The story behind this recipe:
I have always loved green apple candy. Jolly ranchers, jelly beans, Nerds, etc. So why not throw it on to popcorn!? I love candy popcorn, and this just made sense. The first few batches of my fruit flavors didn't turn out very well, but I finally figured out that citric acid was the key. Just a 1/2 tsp made all the difference making the flavors pop out. Watermelon is another favorite that is the exact recipe as this one with the exception of the flavor choice and color preference. I have had fun blowing my friends at work away with some of these delicious creations.
Could I do this without cream of tartar?
It depends. The cream of tartar helps with the end step when the baking soda is added and the mixture foams up. It adds some acidity to the mixture that the baking soda reacts with. If you have a citrus flavor like lemon, orange, lime, etc., it might be ok. I have never tried it without the cream of tartar though. The caramel corn would probably work without cream of tartar because of the brown sugar which is acidic.
With this line of thought, the citric acid might be enough? Give it a try and let me know. Thanks for the question!
Thank you for your response! I checked my cabinet and I actually have cream of tartar but now realize I don’t have Citric acid, is that something that’s needed? I’m just trying to avoid buying things that I might not use again.
I hear you there! I do the same. For the fruit flavors though, I would definitely add the citric acid. It adds a little bit of pucker/sour to the candy and cuts back the sweetness a little. I have made the green apple, lemon, raspberry, and other fruit flavors with and without the citric acid and it has been better WITH the citric acid each time. Let me know how it goes!
I ended up getting the citric acid. It turned out great! Thank you for all of your help!
Awesome! Send a picture if you have it. Thanks for trying out a recipe!
I see butter in the photo, but not in the recipe :/
Wow I totally missed that! Thank you for notifying me. It is 2T of butter. I updated the recipe.