Caramel Corn

I want to preface this post by stating that I have been "functioning" on very little sleep. T is up a lot at night. A bonus is that he tends to wake up at about 3 in the morning and it usually takes about an hour and a half to two hours to get him back to sleep. Conveniently enough, K starts rustling about by 5:45 or 6 - granted he has to stay in his room until 6:30, but he is awake and I can hear him moving. Essentially, my days start at 3. Awesome. I blame my lack of sleep on totally spacing to take a photo of the finished product - delicious caramel corn.

It has cooled down quite a bit here, in fact I would say that mornings and evenings are cold! The afternoons still get nice and toasty, but there is definitely a fall breeze in the air. I was talking to my mom who was making a batch of her amazing caramel corn and thought it would be the perfect thing to make this week. I don't know why, but caramel corn makes me think of cool weather. So, here is my mom's awesome recipe (I quartered the recipe, so those are the measurements I will share.)

First pop up some corn, yo. Throw some kernals into a non-stick pot and cover it. Set the heat to medium and swirl the pot around every minute or two. Once the popping slows down, turn off the heat and wait for another minute or two.

Measure out 8 cups of popcorn. (The original recipe calls for 8 QUARTS of popcorn, which is 32 cups...yeah, that wasn't going to happen in my tiny oven.)

Put 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, 1/4 cup butter, 2 tablespoons of corn syrup, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt into a pan.

 Bring it to a boil.

Turn down the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Then turn the heat off and stir in 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda.

Spread your popcorn onto a baking sheet. I split mine between two sheets and put parchment on the bottom.

Pour the caramel sauce out onto the popcorn. Then bake it at 120C for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Mine didn't get super evenly coated, as you can see from the first photo, but holy moly is it delicious. I took it to a friend's, who was totally bummed because her husband was away on a work trip and she said he would have loved it. I shared some with a neighbor who promptly asked for the recipe. A different friend came over to our house that afternoon and had a healthy helping. There was about a quarter of it left after Y got home from work. He asked if he could have some and it was gone in minutes. Seriously, everyone likes this. If you like caramel corn MAKE THIS!!