Caramel Corn is the perfect salty, sweet, light, cozy treat to whip up for your family to enjoy while snuggled in watching a movie this winter – or to be the star of your holiday party! Whip up a batch of this easy, Disney inspired snack!
Today we welcome guest reviewer Cindi Arroyo from Destinations to Travel with a recipe inspired by the caramel corn available throughout WDW! Take it away, Cindi!
One of our family’s favorite activities is recreating Disney food at home. So after my daughter and I enjoyed a nice dinner of my recreation of Rose & Crown’s Cottage Pie (I enjoyed the veggie version!), we decided to snuggle in for a movie. If that sounds good to you check out the recipe in the December issue of WDW Magazine!
Before we sat down, we discussed what the perfect cozy movie snack would be. We decided that it was, CARAMEL CORN!!! Alas, we had none left from our last trip to WDW (you may have seen it for sale in to-go packages along with kettle corn and fun flavors like sriracha or dill pickle in the gift shops).
My daughter, being the wonderful, adventurous cook that she is, decided to make homemade caramel corn. She scoured the internet, looked for ones that did not have corn syrup as we are both very sensitive to it, and found the “nummy” recipe below. It’s the perfect combination of sweet and lightly salty snack. So hard not to want more!!
(We adapted from Brown Thumb Mama’s recipe to suit our tastes and more closely resemble our beloved Disney treat.)
Ingredients
- 10 cups popped popcorn (about 1/2 cup unpopped) – Don’t use microwave popcorn! Use an air popper or the stove top method—we did!
- 3/4 cup butter
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Pop the popcorn according to the directions. We left it in the pot until ready to use.
Preheat the oven to 250F.
In a large saucepan, melt the butter and whisk in the sugar, stirring until the sugar is dissolved – Learn from our mistake…do NOT use a plastic whisk. The caramel separated…it was not good. We could not recover. Use a metal whisk — I promise your amazing pan will be ok, mine was!!
Increase heat to medium-high and boil the mixture for 3-4 minutes, stirring CONSTANTLY. It will begin to smooth in consistency and then will begin to thicken and look like caramel!
Remove the saucepan from the heat and add the vanilla, salt, and baking soda. The caramel will foam up when you add the baking soda, so be careful. It’s also why you want to use a big saucepan even though the ingredients don’t take up much space.
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- Look at that delicious caramel corn!
Carefully pour the hot caramel over the popcorn (we had to work together for this part) and fold together gently to combine – do not touch the hot caramel!!!
Pour the caramel corn into a 13x9x2 pan, or onto two cookie sheets, either one must be lined with parchment paper to avoid a sticky mess. Bake at 250°F for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes. This is the hardest part…the waiting while the wonderful, warm aroma of caramel corn is filling the kitchen.
Allow to cool (again the waiting…).
Once cool, ENJOY…NOM, NOM, NOM!
In every issue of WDW Magazine we feature a fan favorite recipe like this one – click below and subscribe today to get more tasty Disney recipes each month!
