Caramel Popcorn

I love caramel popcorn, and wait for movie trips to the malls, so that I can buy a big packet of hot caramel popcorn. So finally after lots of internet surfing, I try this at home and it turned out lip-smacking. So no more waiting for movie trips.  

Ingredients

Unpoped dried corns – ½ cup

Vegetable oil – 1 tbsp

Butter – 50 gm ( ½ cup)

Packed brown sugar – 1 tsp

Corn syrup – ¼ cup

Baking soda – ¼ tsp

Vanilla essence – 1 tsp

Method

To make the pop corn

1.      Heat a big pan which has a lid.  Add oil and the corn to it.  Cover the lid.

2.      In 5 min the corn kernels will start popping. Keep shaking the pan with the lid on it.

3.      When the popping stop, immediately transfer the popcorn to the heat proof bowl and let it cool.

4.      Spread the popcorn in to baking sheet and keep it ready

Note: From this point you have to be quick and alert

To make the caramel popcorn

5.      Heat a heavy bottom pan and add the butter, sugar and corn syrup.

6.      Bring it to boil and bring the heat to medium.

7.      Let it boil for 3 min with continuous steering, don’t let the syrup burn.

8.      Immediately add the baking soda and vanilla essence.  Mix it thoroughly.  ( the mixture will fuzz up due to the reaction of the baking soda).

9.      Add the syrup to the ready popcorn and mix nicely so that the caramel gets coated on the corn.

10.  Now bake the caramel corn for 15 min at 120⁰C ( don’t let it burn).

11.  Cool it and serve it.