carmel corn.

the official name for this decadent treat is "come to papa corn." papa is my grandfather and the best man i'll ever know. he is unparalled in his level of sweetness, dedication to his famly, joke telling prowess as well as his innate ability to make anyone smile at any given moment of the day. he also is one of the best bakers i know, and i know a lot of bakers! papa basically invents different cookies and sweets whenever his fancy strikes him. these sweets are so tasty and addicting that he has won numerous awards throughtout erie county as well as made his children, grandchildren and complete strangers beg for said treats.

here's a snap of the cutie and i a few years ago:

while papa invented this recipe a few years ago now, this is my first attempt at making it myself. of course i'm at about a dozen successful consumptions of this carmel corn treat so you might say i am very charmed by this recipe.

i decided to make the carmel corn for our cabin trip this weekend because its a massive recipe, is perfect for fall and well i started baking/cooking about midnight last night and the limited time factor definitely played into my decison-making.

first microwave 2-3 packets of popcorn. we don't own a microwave at our apartment. i know, i know, how very 1950 of us right? well no, we're more lazy than stuck in some nostaligic ideal. we've also gone a year sans microwave and we're still surviving so i'm of the eff it mentality on microwaves. so before i left work i popped 3 bags of popcorn, 1 of which the evil microwave burnt to a proper crisp. so this recipe only has 2 bags of popcorn.
melt on low-medium heat: 2 sticks of butter, 2 cups brown sugar, 1/2 cup karo syrup and 1 teaspoon of salt.
i didn't realize it when i did a quick spin through the grocery store to pick up some of the above ingredients that i bought granulated brown sugar. i didn't even know granulated brown sugar existed. i had some of the other orignal brown sugar at home, so i did a combo of one cup of each. didn't seem to make any difference in the end results.

once fully melted, turn up the heat till the mixture boils and let it boil for a full 5 minutes while stirring constantly. at this point it will be thick and bubbling a way.

and add 1 teaspoon of baking soda. this will cause the carmel to foam up a bit and change color slightly.
pour carmel over popcorn and cover as evenly as you can.

now bake at 200 for an hour, stirring every 15 minutes. remove from oven, spread in an even layer on parchment paper and let cool for a few hours. try to avoid eating all of the popcorn now, but trust me, this will be very difficult.
as in i definitely woke up purely to check on the popcorn, to make sure it wasn't lonley or sad without me by its side. and i may have sampled a few pieces just to make sure it was safe.

drool. drool. drool. drool. drool. drool.