Halloween Recipes - How to Make Popcorn Balls

View Comments (Add Comment)

• MonkeySeeMaster Flag

  Disgusting but Good!
  Man these things look disgusting. though they look disgusting they actually taste very good.

Transcripts

David Guas: Hi! I am David Guas with Damgoodsweet Consulting Group here in the Washington, D.

C. Area. Here today, we are talking about caramel popcorn balls for Halloween time. In this particular recipe, you are going to need a small sauce pot, measuring spoons, measuring cups, a rubber spatula and as far as ingredients go, some very easy to find ingredients you will need. The other thing we have to keep in mind is our safety today. Safety in the kitchen is very important when dealing with hot sugar, hot stoves, hot pots, short knives. So, be careful when you are cooking today in the kitchen. Some of the ingredients that we are using today is dark brown sugar, in this case from the recipe on video, we are using half a cup, using a forth of the recipe, half a cup of dark brown sugar, a quarter cup of unsalted butter and then two tablespoons of light corn syrup.

Once these ingredients are put into your small sauce pot, we are going to go ahead and place this on the stove at a medium heat. Once all the ingredients are completely melted and dissolved and incorporate, we will increase the heat in order to cook it for one minute. While this is melting, we have gone ahead and popped our popcorn and placed it into a stainless steel mixing bowl. In this case, try to get away from any of the butter flavored or specially flavored popcorn, so just use neutral microwavable popcorn.

In this particular recipe, based on the fact that we cut the recipe down by a quarter, we are using two quarts of popped corn. I am using a high heat rubber spatula which can be purchased at any cooking store that ensures that over time, I am not left with warped spatula from the heat, one of my favorite tools in the kitchen. Once all the butter has melted and we have worked out all the lumps of the brown sugar, we have increased the temperature to high and we will cook that for about a minute. Now, I dont trust myself, so I always set timers and you could see how its have completely scraped down the sides to ensure that we dont have any uneven cooking. What happens generally when you have sugar on the sides of the pot is you will tend to get some darker sugar, some burning sugar that gets incorporated and what it does, it changes the tint of the entire caramel. After a minute, we removed our hot sugar, be careful because it does tend to do a little bit of spinning. We are going to go ahead and pour that over the top of the prepared popped popcorn, using our same high heat rubber spatula.

Again, we are going to do something just called folding. At this point, I have supplied in the recipe some rubber gloves that you can use. Now, if you are used to dealing with hot sugar, sometimes you could omit this particular piece of material that you may need. My calloused hands from many years in the kitchen. I really use the rubber gloves when I am dealing with the hot sugar. It is important to use a large bowl and you will see you may have a little bit of overflow. What you are doing is your making sure that you are quoting each cornel of popped popcorn with a bit of a caramel to ensure a nice secure ball once we begin to form. At this point, you can just visually pick up the caramel popcorn and begin to form them into balls.

Some other variations are, you can always add some nuts at this point, but when you are handing this out to the masses during Halloween, nuts tend to be omitted to safeguard any allergies. You can see how easy these form and I am just applying a little bit of pressure while I form these. You can place these, if you dont have granite at top, directly on some parchment paper or baking sheet, so that they dont stick.

Now, once your balls are completely formed, you want to give them about 30 minutes to completely cool and you can see here, I have taken the liberty of crafting just a sandwich bag. You dont have to go out and buy any kind of fancy cellophane candy bags, just a regular zip lock bag for sandwiches, a pair of scissors and a nice ribbon, black, orange or both. You can also use pipe cleaners; those are a lot of fun because you can actually push those into different shapes. Once our popcorn balls are completely cooled, place it into your bag and at this point, I would like to go ahead add the ribbon, and I will cut the excess bag of after I have tied the knot. This is a nice alternative to the standard candy that is handed out generally and to get away from the fruit that you may get at your neighborhood Deniss home. I dont know how many times I have gotten apples and looked at that particular person like they were crazy. So, here we have our fun Halloween popcorn balls that you can hand out during the holiday season.

Other Videos

• 

  Make Salmon, Leek & Fennel Parcels

  Detox with this fresh fish and vegetables--perfect after a diet filled with heavy More »

• 

  Fun Desserts for Kids

  Anna Zeccolo of Tiny Chefs, Inc shows us how to make Fun Desserts for Kids. She More »

• 

  Crab Cakes

  In this video, learn how to make crab cakes.

• 

  How to Make Salmon Croquettes with Cajun ...

• 

  Crayfish Spaghetti

  Crayfish spaghetti with with chillies garlic onion and tomato sauce for the full More »

• 

  How to Clean a Whole Salmon

  Add this skill to your list! Chef Bobby Varua demonstrates how to break down a whole More »