Popcorn

Oh what fun we've had making different types of popcorn. Pack the kids off to the movies or other events with bags of yummy homemade popcorn. Your budget will love you. We make ours the old-fashioned stove-top way, which goes like this:

Popcorn

¼ cup	Vegetable oil
½ cup	Popcorn (Main)

Simple caramel corn

125 g	Butter (Main)
1 cup	Brown sugar

Candy corn

1 cup	Sugar (Main)
¾ cup	Water
3 drops	Food colouring

Directions

To make the popcorn, heat vegetable oil in a large saucepan add popping corn, put the lid on and take it off the heat once the corn stops popping.

Simple caramel corn

1. Combine butter and brown sugar in a saucepan.
2. Cook over a low heat, stirring for 4-5 minutes until dissolved then boil, uncovered, without stirring for 5-8 minutes.
3. Put your popped corn into a large dish (salt it if you like a salted caramel), pour the caramel over and stir through.
4. Spread out on a tray lined with baking paper and leave to cool.

Coloured candy corn

1. This requires extremely hot sugar syrup so not something the kids should make on their own — they'll have fun eating it though!
2. Bring sugar and water to the boil and boil at a high temperature (115C) until it forms medium balls when a little is dropped into cold water.
3. Add 2-5 drops of food colouring towards the end of cooking then pour over and stir through.
4. Sprinkle straight away with 3 Tbsp icing sugar and keep stirring until the kernels separate.

Savoury popcorn

1. The options are endless here. Play with mixing different spices with salt and stir them through the popcorn while it's hot. We discovered this mix tastes a little bit like Rashuns.
2. Mix 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp smoked paprika and a good ¼ cup finely grated parmesan and stir through popcorn that has been cooked in half butter/half oil.