Apple Popcorn Recipe

Ingredients:

Steps:

• Get all of your ingredients ready. Once the mixture is hot enough to add the food coloring, flavor oil, and baking soda, you will need to move fast and have everything already measured out and ready to go. You also need to have your popcorn in some kind of metal bowl or cookie sheet(s) so you can pour the hot sugar mixture on to it. I use a giant stainless steel bowl that is 18″ round by 6″ deep, and it works great! It fits in to the oven and I can stir it around without anything spilling. Keep in mind that you need to be really careful with the hot sugar mixture (aka molten lava) to avoid a serious burn.
• Add all ingredients from the first group of ingredients. Just toss everything in. It doesn’t need to look pretty! Note: I use a thick-bottomed saucepan, and it helps evenly distribute the heat to avoid any scorching. If you only have a cheaper thin-bottomed pan, no worries. Just stir the mixture more frequently while it is cooking. Stir everything up with a spoon first. If you use a whisk too soon all of your ingredients will get stuck inside the whisk and be a real pain to get out. Switch to a whisk and turn on the heat to medium-high.
• You don’t need to stir the mix constantly, but give it a good stir with a whisk every 30-60 seconds or so to avoid scorching. As soon as it starts to boil/simmer, immediately turn the heat down to medium. Now is the time to put in your candy thermometer. At this point I do not stir anymore. Keep a close watch, and immediately remove the pan from the heat/burner once it reaches 250°F.
• Add the food coloring and flavoring oil; whisk together thoroughly. Add the baking soda and citric acid; whisk them in. Throughout these additions, the mixture will bubble up a bit and get foamy. The color appears lighter at this point also. Note: the bubbling and foaming is why you need to use a a deeper saucepan than seems unnecessary when you first start cooking. Safety first!
• (Red pictured only, sorry!) Immediately pour the sugary mixture over your popcorn. Just dump in on in any fashion! Scrape everything out of the pan that you can, but don’t take too much time here. I have not melted a rubber spatula with this recipe, but I suppose it is possible. So to avoid ruining equipment, I have been using a silicone spatula I use for pancakes and eggs and it works great. Carefully stir and press the popcorn in to the sugary mix.
• Once you get it mixed up, put the whole thing in to a 250°F oven for 30 minutes. Remove every 15 minutes and stir it up again. The candy will be very soft and you will be able to coat the popcorn more thoroughly each time. I press the spatula in to the mix pretty hard and try to really coat each piece of popcorn during these intervals. When it becomes harder to stir and less sticky, it is done.
• Remove the candy popcorn from the oven, give it a quick stir, and carefully dump it out on to a heat-resistant surface. Use your spatula and flatten out the mixture. I like to get it pretty flat; 1-2 popcorn kernels deep is ideal. It will break up in to smaller chunks better this way. Let it cool for about 15 minutes and you are ready to chow down!