Candied Popcorn for Candy Buffets

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I love throwing parties.  Thinking about the logistics of a gathering has always fascinated me.  It also gives me a great excuse to make other people eat the food I make.  I recently helped to plan a graduation party. My goal was to have as MUCH as possible be school colors.  We did a really great candy buffet, mostly supplied by Dollar Tree and Oriental Trader, but the star of the show was the candied popcorn.  I ended up making my own because I coudln’t see paying $23 for a little bag from the places I found online.

It was way easier than I imagined, and it was absolutely delicious.  The best part about this is that you can do it in ANY color or flavor to match your theme!  I used gelatin to flavor the candy coating.  Our school colors are blue and gold, so I choose Jell-o’s lemon for the yellow and their cotton candy for the blue.  I mostly chose the cotton candy because so many of the other blue candies we had were blue raspberry.  We did double batches because the cotton candy only came in a 6 oz package.  I think the lemon turned out better.  It almost didn’t make it to the party.  It was just so crunchy and refreshing!

I almost always have these ingredients in my pantry.  This would be something fun to make for a rainy day when you’re stuck inside with the whole family.  Not only do you get to have fun making it, but then you can have it as a great snack while you watch a movie or play a game.

What I Used:

  • Unpopped popcorn
  • Popcorn machine or other popping method
  • Vegetable oil for popcorn machine
  • 6 oz gelatin
  • butter
  • Corn syrup
  • sugar
  • Cookie sheet or cake pans
  • Baking paper
  • Rubber spatula

 

What youNEED:

  • 10 cups of popped popcorn
  • 3 oz gelatin
  • 2 T butter
  • ½ c sugar
  • Cookie sheet or cake pans
  • Baking paper
  • 2 oz corn syrup
  • Bowl for mixing
  • Mixing utensil

Directions:

  1. Preheat your oven to 250 F.
  2. Prepare your cookie sheet or cake pan by covering it in baking paper. This makes your cleanup much easier.
  3. Put your popcorn in a bowl big enough to mix in.
  4. Melt your wet ingredients (butter and corn syrup) together in a saucepan over medium heat.
  5. When wet ingredients are combined, add gelatin and sugar.
  6. While continuing to stir, raise the heat until the mixture starts to boil. Reduce the heat and continue to stir frequently.  You will see the mixture bubble, reduce and turn to a syrup.  It only takes about three minutes after it boils. Be careful not to overcook the syrup; burnt sugar rarely tastes good when it’s not done on purpose.
  7. Pour your candy coating over the popcorn. Using a rubber spatula, stir until the popcorn is evenly coated.
  8. Empty the bowl onto your baking sheet. Spread the popcorn out into a single layer.
  9. Bake the popcorn at 250 F for about half an hour. I found that it did not need stirred or spun in my oven.
  10. Remove popcorn from the oven. Wait about one minute until the candy is cool enough to touch.  Pull the popcorn into bite sized pieces.  If you do not separate the popcorn from itself now, you will never get the opportunity to do it after the candy has completely cooled.  If it cools too quickly, you can always use your meat mallet to break it apart, but you will not have whole kernels.

We poured the candy into zip top bags to store for about two days until the party.  We displayed it in tall clear glass vases and served it with little silver scoops.  It was still good about a week later when we finally emptied all of the zip top bags.