After a looooong quarter of Kellogg fun followed by a jam-packed snowy week of Kellogg fun aka ski trip my body is like “girl, please” and has decided to shut down. This means that for the past two days I have basically done nothing but napped, watched all of this season’s episodes of 30 Rock and all of season 1 of Scandal. Yes, this is my life. Nevermind that I just realized that Christmas is right around the corner. I tell you, these days if it isn’t in an Outlook invite it doesn’t exist. Damn. Shame. Plus I’m basically ready to bypass Christmas and just usher in the new year already. Out with the old…
Anyhoo, my fever recently broke, my chills went away which gave me clearance to hit the mean streets of E-town (Evanston) in search of joie. My first excursion involved getting a tub stopper (bubble bath time!), a doughnut and hitting my guilty pleasure World Market. It wasn’t until I got BACK home that I decided that what was missing in my life were two things: guacamole and a newly dreamed up popcorn confection. So I hit the streets again to venture out to downtown Evanston’s only grocery story aka Whole Paycheque (but what if you don’t have a paycheque?) Foods.
I’m forever wanting to make caramel corn and with the holidays fast approaching I got the crazy idea in my head to make a candy cane, chocolate and nut concoction. Pretty brilliant, right? I searched the interwebs for inspiration but couldn’t really find anything that fit the bill which meant… experiment time!
I started off with my favourite caramel corn recipe (what, you don’t have one? Shame.) and went H.A.M. from there. Originally I was just going to do candy canes and chocolate chips but then spied some walnuts in my cupboard that wanted to play too… so in they went.
The results while not attractive are delicious. The candy canes melted just enough throughout the mixture that every bite is filled with minty goodness (but not in an overpowering way). The chocolate (not surprisingly) melted where I was hoping it would maintain some of its chippy integrity. Then there were the nuts… perfectly toasted and full of win. Love. Obviously health food.
On my next batch I would definitely play around with adding my chocolate chips later in the game to ensure maximum solid chocolate chunks.
Festive Caramel Corn
190 g granulated white sugar
115 g brown sugar
75 g corn syrup
90 g water
pinch kosher salt
60 g unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
140 g walnut pieces
60 g popped popcorn
150 g chocolate chips
100 g chopped candy canes (I used the food processor)
Combine the water, salt, sugars and corn syrup in a large pot and bring to a boil. Once it starts boiling and the butter and vanilla extract and stir constantly using a figure eight motion.
When the mixture reaches 260°F add the walnuts and continue stirring. When the mixture reaches 300°F add the popcorn, chocolate chips and candy cane pieces. Remove from heat and pour evenly onto silpat or greased cookie sheet.
Allow the popcorn to cool and then seperate into chunks and store in plastic container or ziploc bag.
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