Monday, December 29, 2008

New Year's Eve Treats

THIS RECIPE HAS BEEN UPDATED!  **See below.

Come on, now, don't start that diet just yet.  There are too many goodies to consume before the year's out!  Our little family is going to stay up til midnight Wednesday, in a test to see if we all still like each other that late at night.   We have a big Monopoly tourny planned, as well as reading aloud from the Terrestria Chronicles (Ed Dunlop) and maybe some of The Home Ranch (Ralph Moody), watching an S.M.Davis DVD, other activities to be announced, and eating some good stuff.  We'll start out with pizza, then maybe some chocolatey sort of something, and DEFINITELY some of this super yummy, super easy, home-made microwave caramel-corn!  A friend of mine introduced me to this many years ago, and I kind of forgot about it.  Today I looked up the recipe and gave it a try. Oh my.  This is so good.  You just gotta try it.  Here's what was left of my trial batch after five minutes:


It's a good thing I have a family, or else I would have consumed the entire batch myself.  Here's the recipe, from allrecipes.com:

Microwave Caramel Corn

2 bags of popped microwave popcorn (Act II is great)
1 C brown sugar
1/2 C margarine or butter (butter is better, of course)
1/4 C light corn syrup or honey
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda

Place the popped porcorn into a large bowl and set aside.  In a 2 qt. heat-proof glass dish, combine the brown sugar, butter, corn syrup, salt and vanilla.  Heat for 2 minutes in the micro*, then take out and stir well.  Put it back in and cook for another 1 1/2 minutes.  Remove from micro and stir in the baking soda. (Don't skip this step!)

Pour the syrup over the popcorn and mix well.  Spray a brown paper bag with non-stick spray, and pour the popcorn mixture in.  Turn the top down a couple of times to close the bag. (I did this in a regular sized grocery bag but I cut off the top and had to crumple it to make it fit the turntable in the microwave.) Place in micro and cook for one minute.  Remove, shake, flip the bag over, and return it to the micro.  Cook one minute more. Dump the popcorn out onto waxed paper to cool untl the caramel is set.  Store in an airtight container, if you get that far.





You can half this recipe easily and use just one bag of popcorn, but why would you want to?  And you could add pecans and drizzle the finished product with chocolate...   For more super easy, wonderful-good treats, visit Cooking With the Preacher's Wife.






*1500 watt microwave
**  I forgot to tell you that I made only half the batch in that big bag!


4 comments:

  1. Oh yum! Sounds like you guys are going to have a great time. This is exactly what I wanted to do with our family, except the staying up till midnight part. But I do want us to stay home, eat lotsa snack foods, and play some board games, only we were invited to a party at some friends from church and my husband really wants to go. So we compromised and we are to leave their house by nine...hmmm, at least I'll still get the snack foods :-).

    Sally, I'm curious about this book that you had mentioned by the same author of "The Mixed-Up Files of ...". Have you read it and what did you think? I was a tiny bit dissapointed with the one we read only because the children were hateful at times to one another. We were constantly prefacing chapters with how we are not to speak to one another this way or that way. So with that said I was wonderring if this other book has the same type dialogue. We are always on the look-out for great read-alouds and was just curious.

    I hope you guys have a great evening Wednesday night and enjoy your snacks, Monoply, and each other!

    Blessings, Julie

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  2. I would ideally like to sleep but chances are we will be with friends and eating.....

    Thanks for the recipe!

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  3. Add Chocolate to anything and I'm all over it!! I took a 100 cal bag of popcorn and once it was popped, I added a handful of chocolate kisses - closed the bag and shook it. It did in a pinch real nicely. Your recipe sounds just wonderful! Lynn Marie

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  4. That sounds delish! I love caramel corn. I may give this a try. But my diet is already in full swing. I may push the pause button for Wednesday though. If I do, I should make this. I was thinking of making buck-eyes though. You know the chocolate peanutbutter balls that make life worth living sometimes?

    Happy New Year!

    Jenn

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