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Enjoy a taste of the fair at home with this crunchy, sweet, and salty caramel corn perfect for a summer snack or your next movie night!

A few weeks ago my roommates took me to the local Tulip Time arts and crafts festival.  A HUGE vendor event with hundreds of booths selling art, crafts, food, and souvenirs.  Ever since we spent a lazy Sunday wandering between the booths, enticed by the smell of kettle corn and candied nuts I’ve been craving caramel corn.  Not sure why since no one was actually selling caramel corn but it’s been teasing my taste buds for weeks.

Lucky for me Nicole from Little Blog on the Homestead has a recipe for the most amazing caramel sauce.  She also has this pretty fantastic stove top popcorn popper.  I haven’t made popcorn outside of a microwave in forever so even though it’s a bit more labor intensive turning that hand crank it really does taste so different!  Sorry, Mom for all those times I told you microwave popcorn was the same as the good stuff.

So, I popped some popcorn and pulled together this amazing caramel sauce.  My mouth literally watered as I combined the two, drizzling the caramel over the buttery popcorn and then gently stirring it to coat every single nook  and cranny of those crunchy popcorn kernels.  Then I promptly spread it out to set up.  Cause that’s what you do with any other kind of coated popcorn, right?  When it still hadn’t set a few hours later I blamed it on the humidity in the house and lack of AC.  {More about freakish yankees who live without heat, later}

Until my roommate walked by and asked me if I was going to pop it into the oven so it would set up, harden, and get crunchy.  Wait, what?  That’s a thing?  I didn’t think it would work but frankly I was impatient and wanted my popcorn NOW so I shoved the tray into the oven, set it as low as it would go and waited to see if it would work.  And it did!  So she was right.  But don’t tell her I said that 😉

Do you have a favorite fair or carnival food you like to recreate at home?

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Old Fashioned Caramel Corn

Yield: 5 cups

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

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Ingredients

• 5 cups popped popcorn
• 2 sticks butter
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1 cup heavy cream

Instructions

1. In a saucepan over medium heat add butter, brown sugar, and heavy cream.
2. Whisking constantly, bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and allow to boil for 3-4 minutes.
3. Pour 1½ cups of caramel sauce over the popped popcorn and stir gently to coat.
4. Preheat oven to 200 degrees and spread popcorn in an even layer on a baking sheet and bake for one hour, stirring after 30 minutes.
5. Break into pieces and store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.