Milkmaid's Recipe Box: Caramel Corn*

Milkmaid's Recipe Box

FOOD, FOOD, FOOD! I'm such a FARMER at heart-- even a CALF knows that so much in life is about the FOOD! (A bit of a "bio" about me can be found way down near the bottom.)

You can find a recipe index entitled "Labels" down along the right side, starting below the picture of the farm. Then, below the "Label" list are pictures of some of my old "standbys"-- click on their picture and it should take you to the recipe.

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Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Caramel Corn*

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 teaspoon SALT
1 cup BUTTER
2 cups BROWN SUGAR
1/2 cup light CORN SYRUP
...
1/2 teaspoon BAKING SODA
...
5 quarts POPPED POPCORN

DIRECTIONS:

Pop corn until you have 5 quarts of popped corn. Put into a large bowl, and set aside.

Put salt, butter, brown sugar, and corn syrup into a heavy-bottomed pot, and stir constantly. Bring to a boil over MEDIUM heat-- then, continue to boil (a "boil" that can't be stirred down) for only 2 minutes. While all of this is happening, just keep stirring all the while and make sure nothing is sticking/burning on the bottom of your pan. (Be careful-- this mixture is so very hot!!!)
Remove from heat and stir in the baking soda which will cause it to change color a little and foam up.
After the baking soda is stirred in, pour the very hot mixture over popped popcorn and GENTLY mix --lifting from the bottom and coming up through the kernels until popped kernels are well coated. (Vigorous mixing would break the fragile kernels up too much.)
Put coated popcorn on a large baking sheet (about 16-inch by 11-inch?) that was ever so LIGHTLY sprayed with non-stick spray.

Below: Because I made a double batch, I had two pans...

5. Bake in a pre-heated 250-degree oven for 1 hour, but you must gently lift/stir it (to sort of separate the "clumps") EVERY 15 minutes.

6. At the end of 1 hour, remove from the oven; stir for the last time and let the caramel corn cool in the pans.

7. When cool, dump into a large bowl and gently break up the largest clusters before putting into whatever kind of containers you choose.

*Recipe from Smurawa's Country Bakery in Pulaski, WI, and you can find them right here: http://www.smurawabakery.com/

Can you imagine ANY small-town bakery selling 20,000 Paczkis on "Fat Tuesday" like they did last year? Well, check this out: http://www.smurawabakery.com/paczki-day (Oh, those "Polish things" are SO GOOD!!!!)