Pot of Gold Caramel Corn for St. Patrick's Day

It's official, I have now eaten about half of that cup of caramel corn while making this tutorial and I am now sick.  Dear caramel corn ... why do I love you soooooo much? 

This is a really great basic recipe for caramel corn.  I wanted to make a caramel corn that would work well with beer for St. Patrick's Day.  This caramel corn is loaded with nuts. 

You can check out the full tutorial over on Cut Out and Keep

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I Want S'more Caramel Corn

I have been dying to make some sort of smore inspired caramel corn for several months now.  I finally had the time to develop this great recipe:

1 batch of air popped pop corn (or 2 bags of microwave popcorn)

place the popcorn in a greased 9x13 or larger pan and put it into the oven at 220 while you make the caramel

For the caramel:

1 cup butter

2 cups brown sugar

1/2 cup corn syrup

1 tbsp molasses

1 tsp cinnamon

 Mix all of the ingredients together and bring to a boil over medium heat in a very heavy pan. 

 Once the mixture comes to a rolling boil (i.e. a boil that you cannot stir down) then you remove it from the heat and mix in 1 tbsp of baking soda.  It is going to foam up.  This is the right thing.  Baking soda is going to make the caramel crisper.

 Stir the caramel sauce around until you have all of your warmed popcorn coated. 

You need to keep the caramel corn in the oven at 220 for the next hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

 While your caramel corn is cooking, you should cut up 1 bag of mini candy bars into thirds.  You could use chocolate chips, but I love the look and taste of the candy bars.  Once the caramel corn is totally cool, you can mix in 2 cups of mini marshmallows and the candy bars.  You could also add some mini graham crackers like teddy grahams, but the caramel has a flavor similar to a graham cracker. 

My Newest Caramel Corn

This caramel corn is inspired by one of my favorite treats- Chocolate Covered Strawberries

It is my standard caramel corn recipe:

1 batch of popcorn (either 1 bag popped or 1 load in your air popper)

Heat your oven to 220 and put the popcorn in there in a greased pan and keep it there until the sauce is ready.

Heat is a very heavy bottomed sauce pan:

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter

1/4 cup corn syrup

1 package strawberry jello

(you can also add some pureed fresh strawberries)

Bring this to a boil, stirring constantly.  Boil for 5 minutes.  Turn off the heat and add 1/2 tsp baking soda.  You may also want to add some extra red food coloring (based on how red your want your caramel corn).

Stir your hot caramel sauce onto the popcorn until it is coated.  Put it into the oven and stir every 15 minutes for an hour. 

Remove from the oven and mix in some mini marshmallows.  I then mix in chocolate chips until the corn is coated.  Finally, once it is all cooled, you can mix in some mini kisses, sprinkles, dried Strawberries, etc. 

Enjoy!