Will you buy a big bucket of popcorn when you go for a movie in the cinema?  Not sure if you will feel the same as me as I feel most of the time, the choice of the popcorn flavor is somewhat limited, salted, buttered or toffee. I personally find salted and buttered are rather boring, and the toffee flavor is always not to my taste. I remembered one time that this particular cinema had the sweet popcorns I like, and because of this, I would choose to go to this cinema whenever possible.

The best popcorn I had was last year at Carmen’s babyshower, oh boy, this caramel popcorn was so addicting!  They are actually very easy to make. Now I got a chance to make myself, got an apèro to attend tomorrow and only finger food will be served so I thought this caramel popcorn would fit perfectly.  I have saved some to enjoy at home for our movie nights.

Adapted from Recipzaar

Ingredients:

• 400g popcorns popped
• 200g unskinned almonds, briefly crushed into smaller pieces
• 200g cashew nuts, briefly crushed into smaller pieces
• 100g pecan, briefly crushed into smaller pieces
• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups raw brown sugar
• 1/2 cup clear honey
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• fresh ground sea salt to add at the end (for making salted caramel popcorn)

Directions:

1. Prepare the popped popcorn as instructed from your pack, mix with the nuts and set aside.
2. Grease a large baking tray generously with butter and set aside. If not enough, grease 2 baking trays.
3. Preheat oven to 120°C (250°F).
4. Prepare the caramel in the meantime. Melt the butter in a deep pan at low heat, add in the brown sugar and honey, keep stirring until the butter is melted and all well mixed. At this time, you will find the sugar is hard to fully dissolved. At this time, turn the heat a bit higher and bring the mixture to boil for about 4 mins or so, stir occasionally to make sure no burning occurs.
5. The brown sugar should be melted by now and form a smooth thick liquid. Remove from heat and add in the vanilla essence, salt and baking soda. Stir to mix, you will see the mixture will fizz immediately and the color of the liquid will become lighter brown and the caramel is done.
6. Pour the caramel to the popcorn and nuts mixture immediately, stir to coat.
7. Bake the caramel popcorn in the oven for about 30 mins, stir occasionally.
8. Your caramel popcorn is done, transfer to 2 large bowl(s), for one bowl sprinkle some sea salt if desired to make two variations: salted caramel popcorn and salted caramel popcorn.
9. When cool down completely, you can save some in airtight bags or glass jars to enjoy later.

Notes:

1. I deliberately did not coat the popcorn completely with the caramel as you can still some white parts uncoated as I prefer it less sweet.
2. Most recipes call for corn syrup but corn syrup is actually not that healthy so I learnt from my friend that I could use honey instead. As a matter of fact, corn syrup is not easily available here.
3. You can use any nuts you like such as pecans, peanuts, etc.
4. Making all 400g popcorn actually take quite long to make, because you have to pop the popcorn batch by batch, you can make half portion of the above recipe accordingly.
5. Gift idea: You can also pack them into individual bags, tie with a ribbon as a little homemade gift.

Links:

veggie version

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