Caramel Popcorn Balls

In large saucepan combine sugars, butter and corn syrup.  Heat over Medium high heat stirring well until it comes to a boil.  Continue to stir and cook to softball stage, 235-245 degrees Fahrenheit as registered on a candy thermometer.  This stage can be determined by dropping a spoonful of hot syrup into a bowl of very cold water. In the water, use your fingers to gather the cooled syrup into a ball. If it has reached soft-ball stage, the syrup easily forms a ball while in the cold water, but flattens once removed from the water.   Remove from heat,  add 1 teaspoon of baking soda and stir very well.  Mixture will rise up in the pan.  Continue to stir.  Add one can sweetened condensed milk and stir. Last add 1 teaspoon vanilla and stir until mixed in well.  Pour over popped corn and mix to coat popcorn.  At this point, butter your hands and form balls and place them on wax paper or plastic wrap coated in cooking spray.  After all the balls are formed, wrap each one tightly in plastic wrap.   You can also just put all the caramel popcorn in a bowl and let people just pull off what they want.  Be sure to remove any unpopped kernels before making these.  We do this by “sifting” our popcorn over a cooling rack.

*The best flavor comes from ‘movie style’ popcorn with the contrast of the salty and sweet.  We sometimes use one part air-popped popcorn to one part freshly popped popcorn sold at our local Walmart.  Large bags of buttered popcorn can also be found at Smart and Final.  If you are using air -popped season the popcorn first with butter and salt.  We weigh the popcorn then fill three jelly roll pans each with a mound of popcorn.  The popcorn can also be mixed directly on the counter.

Thanks Emily and Laurie for sharing this recipe.