Decadent Caramel Popcorn on our Homestead This Week

Last Updated on January 21, 2023 by Michelle

The best thing to do with popcorn? Air pop it and cover it with your family’s favorite topping, of course. For our family, that means homemade Carmel Popcorn. We made a batch yesterday, and it’s all gone today.

This popcorn recipe has been a staple in our family since my daughters were little. I remember I would have to mix it up when they were napping. I couldn’t handle any distractions, or it would be a complete fail. Of course today having their multiple sets of teen hands available for stirring comes in extra handy when it’s time to coat the popcorn in the warm caramel.

As we dove into making one of our favorite decadent snacks yesterday, I realized I should share the recipe with my readers… scroll below the recipe if you’d like to see the new excitements on the farm.

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Decadent Caramel Popcorn

This is hands-down our favorite caramel treat and one of my family's all-time favorite snacks ever. And it's amazingly easy to make!

Prep Time

15-20 minutes

Cook Time

1 hour

Servings

quarts

Ingredients

• 12 quarts plain popcorn we fill a 8 liter bowl with air-popped popcorn
• 2 cups butter
• 2 pounds packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup corn syrup we use both light and dark, depending on what hint of flavors we're in the mood for (or what we have on hand)
• 1/2 cup molasses

Prep Time 15-20 minutes Cook Time 1 hour Servings quarts Ingredients 12 quarts plain popcorn we fill a 8 liter bowl with air-popped popcorn 2 cups butter 2 pounds packed brown sugar 1/2 cup corn syrup we use both light and dark, depending on what hint of flavors we're in the mood for (or what we have on hand) 1/2 cup molasses

Instructions

1. If you use an air-popped popcorn popper, keep filling it with kernels until you have a large, almost-8-liter bowl filled.
2. Divide the popcorn into about 4 or 5 large bowls and have 4 or 5 sets of willing, stirring hands on call, if possible
3. Bring the other ingredients to a boil over medium heat and keep the pan at a medium boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
4. Quickly pour the caramel evenly over the 4 or 5 bowls of waiting popcorn, and ask eager, waiting helpers to quickly stir each bowl, being sure to evenly coat all the popcorn as best as possible with the caramel.
5. After spreading coated popcorn onto 2 roasting pans, bake it at 250 for 1 hour.
6. Bbreak it apart when it's still warm, right out of the oven.

Recipe Notes

We love our air-popped popcorn popper and our That's-a-Bowl for making caramel corn. It's the perfect size for measuring the right amount of popped popcorn. Then it's nice and roomy for mixing the caramel onto a fourth or fifth of the popcorn. (Yeah, ideally I'd love 4 or 5 That's-a-Bowls for this recipe.) And it's perfect for storing the caramel popcorn too.

For what it's worth, I've found that my family does not like this recipe with blackstrap molasses, and you can add 1 pound peanuts to the popped popcorn bowls before adding topping if you would like.

Once it's cooled, we store our popcorn in an airtight container for up to a week. Wait, who am I kidding? I've never seen this last in our house longer than a few days, but we could store it up to a week if we didn't devour it so feverishly.

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This week

We’ve been enjoying some busy weeks around the homestead, filled with first-cut hay gathering, hanging a new (very old) door for our laundry room, tending to the garden, and counting down the weeks until Scout’s calf is due. (She’s due to calf in exactly a month.)

Lilac syrup and other blooms

While our lilac blooms were all spent a few weeks ago (read here for how I make amazingly easy and oh-so-yummy lilac syrup from a a handful of lilac blooms), this week the irises are at the height of their beauty, as are the dandelions. And yes, you read that right. Read here if you’d like to know why I happen to think dandelions are beautiful. Then you might wanna check out these 12 amazing facts you should know about the beautiful iris flower.

Ruffled feathers

The baby chicks no longer look like babies and have learned to fend for themselves around the farm. I took this video of them around the water bowl this morning when a duck decided she wanted an early bath. Eagle, our broody hen whom we successfully convinced to adopt chicks last month, taught her babies well. The chicks are “on their own” now, free ranging around the homestead, which of course means I do need to watch out for any dangers our rooster might pose to them. (I explained in a post last summer all about the huge mistake I made with our rooster and how my mistake devastatingly posed a huge danger to our young hens.) By the way, Eagle shows up about half way through this video, then walks away at the end. You’ll see that she totally let her babies fend for themselves with the boisterous bathing duck.

A barn cat in training

We added a new barn cat to the farm this week too, whom we have christened Theodore Lawrence (aka “Teddy”). He is quickly learning to reign supreme over the fields and woodlands. Yet he had no idea what to do with the first mouse he met. We hope that he soon learns what his job description as “barn cat” entails.

I hope things are beautiful in your neck of the woods today. And if you’re in the mood for the best popcorn ever, definitely whip up a batch of this decadent Caramel Popcorn.

p.s. Any guesses whom our new kitty is named after? (Keep in mind, I do have four “Little Women.”)

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