Caramel Popcorn

Today we were at the mall and we walked by a movie theater. We smelled popcorn – not regular popcorn but caramel pop corn. I knew when we got home I was going to have to make caramel popcorn! So here is my easy recipe – no thermometer required!

Caramel Popcorn

• 1-cup sugar
• ½ cup butter or margarine
• ½ cup light corn syrup
• ½ TSP salt
• 1 TSP vanilla extract
• ½ TSP baking soda
• 2 (3-oz) packages microwave popcorn, popped (16 cups)

Stir together first 5 ingredients in a saucepan; bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring often. Remove mixture from heat and stir in baking soda. *Tip – Use your 1/2 cup measuring cup to measure the sugar then the corn syrup – it’s 1 less thing to wash!*

Place half of the popcorn  in  2 lightly greased shallow baking pans. (Or use 1 giant baking pan.) Pour sugar mixture evenly over popcorn; stir well with a lightly greased spatula.

Bake at 250 for 1 hour stirring every 15 minutes, with your spatula making sure your get the mixture off the bottom of the pan. Spread on wax paper to cool, breaking apart large clumps as mixture cools. Store in airtight containers.

Click here for a printable version of the recipe.