Popcorn Balls

Sorry it's taken me so long to update this blog. I've been hard at work doing research, trying new recipes and taste testing. It's a hard job, but somebody's got to do it!

I was looking for a yummy recipe for popcorn balls to give as small gifts to everyone who came to our holiday party. My mom and I made more than 40 softball-size popcorn balls and wrapped them in colored plastic wrap. They were a big hit!

I really like the versatility of this recipe (see Optional Ingredients), but it definitely helps to have at least two people in the kitchen when making them.

Ingredients
3/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup non-hydrogenated vegan margarine
2 teaspoons cold water
2 5/8 cups confectioners' sugar
1 cup marshmallows
5 quarts plain popped popcorn
salt (to taste)

Optional Ingredients: 1 tsp of Mexican vanilla or other flavoring, non-dairy chocolate chips (for example, Baker's semi-sweet chocolate chunks), chopped nuts, non-dairy candy, crushed peppermint candies, and/or food coloring - the sky is the limit!

Directions
Pop the popcorn in a little oil in a large pan on the stove. Once popped, spread it out on a cookie sheet and pick out any unpopped kernels. Keep the popcorn warn in the oven.

In a saucepan over medium heat, stir together corn syrup, margarine, cold water, confectioners' sugar, and marshmallows. Heat and stir until boiling. Then turn down the heat, but keep syrup mixture warm. (Some recipes recommend using a crockpot to keep it warm, but we just left the stove on the lowest setting and stirred often so it didn't burn.) This is when you can add the teaspoon of Mexican vanilla or food coloring, if you want.

Coat a large mixing bowl and scraping spoon with cooking spray.

This is where it's handy to have an extra set of hands. Have one person spray the other's hands with cooking spray - front and back. The person with greased hands gets to play with the popcorn balls, while the person with clean hands gets to stir the syrup on the stove, pull the popcorn out of the oven, add the optional ingredients, and tear off the pieces of plastic wrap.

In the large, greased bowl, add the popcorn and generously coat with the syrup mixing with your hands and the scraping spoon. We didn't have bowl big enough to hold all of the popcorn, so we split it in half, which worked well. We also added a bit of salt to achieve the irresistible sweet and salty combination. You can add the optional ingredients at this time; we used non-dairy chocolate chips and chopped pecans.

Then form the popcorn into balls, like packing a snowball. It's up to you how big you want to make the balls, but we made softball-size balls. I tend to have big eyes, especially when there is chocolate involved! We found it worked well to immediately wrap the balls in plastic wrap, and later we tied ribbon around the top.

We made two batches, the first was just the plain recipe. The second batch we added the vanilla, chocolate, and pecans. With the second batch, the first bowl of popcorn and syrup must have been a bit cool, because when we added the chocolate chips they did not melt. The popcorn remained snowy white, dotted with clusters of chocolate chips and nuts. The chips that sat in the syrup at the bottom of the bowl for the second half of the popcorn melted a bit, so the popcorn turned a delicious chocolaty color.

The reviews from our guests were positive: some preferred the melted chocolate, some preferred biting into a chunk of chocolate, and all but one thought that the sweet and salty combination was great. For those people who don't like chocolate (a serious condition that I hope they find cure for one day) we had the plain popcorn balls. Only one person thought that they were too sweet. It might be worth trying next time to use less confectioners' sugar and see how they turn out.

If you're feeling really creative, one recipe described making snowmen out of popcorn balls and decorating with candy.