How to Make Butter Toffee Popcorn

The Kernel
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Do you and your friend group share a massive sweet tooth and a popcorn addiction? Well, then you’re at the right place! Butter toffee popcorn is the ultimate popcorn recipe to satisfy your sweet tooth. It’s also a bangin’ snack to accompany any type of movie or TV show. Be careful, though, once you serve this to your friends and family, there’s no coming back. They’ll be coming back for seconds and more, because it’s that good! It’s also surprisingly easy to make. But there are some dangerous techniques that you need to be careful about.

 As with everything that includes molten hot caramel, it’s no joke! Melted sugar burns are even more serious than hot water or hot oil splatter. Because sugar melts at 365°F or 185°C, which is ridiculously higher than boiling water. On top of that, sugar is a sticky substance, and once you get lava-like caramel splatter on your skin, you can’t wipe it off very easily. So, caramel may be sweet, but sugar burn isn’t!

Popping the Popcorn

First, we should get poppin’! After all, our butter toffee sauce is nothing without its accomplice, isn’t it? This recipe is so easy that we’re not sure which part is easier; is it popping the popcorn or making the butter toffee sauce? Well, let’s see. There’re lots of ways of popping popcorn, and we’re going to use the stovetop method. But feel free to use any other method or equipment you’re comfortable with. You can even use microwave popcorn for some extra butteriness! There’s no right or wrong as long as you get popped popcorn. Here’s our stovetop method:

What You’ll Need

  • ½ cup corn kernels – yields approximately 16 cups of popped popcorn
  • ¼ cup coconut or neutral oil
  • Large pot with a tight fitting lid
  • Large serving bowl

Instructions 

  • Put the pot over medium heat
  • Add the oil and let it heat up
  • Toss in a few kernels and wait for them to start popping
  • When they pop, add the remaining kernels, give it a quick stir, and cover the lid
  • Wait for all the kernels to pop, occasionally shaking the pot to prevent them from burning
  • When the popping sound starts to die down, turn off the flame, and dump the popcorn to the large serving bowl

Butter Toffee Sauce

Now that our popcorn is ready, we can get to the sweet part! Popcorn is addictively delicious as it is, and butter toffee sauce just elevates it to a whole new level. Imagine you’re eating butter toffee covered popcorn handfuls at a time while watching your favorite actor’s movie with your family and friends. We don’t need to say anything else, do we? Now that we piqued your interest, let’s make this ridiculously easy but scrumptiously sweet sauce for our popcorn!

WARNING: We would like to remind you that you should avoid getting melted sugar on your skin at all costs. If you want to be really cautious, you can use long sleeve shirts, heat resistant gloves, or a splatter screen for extra protection.

Ingredients

  • ½ cup light brown sugar
  • ½ cup white sugar
  • ½ cup butter
  • ½ cup light corn syrup
  • ¼ cup water
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • ½ tsp vanilla extract
  • Small pinch of salt

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 250°F or 120°C
  • Pop the popcorn if you haven’t already and dump it to a large bowl
  • Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat
  • Once it’s melted, add the light brown sugar, white sugar, light corn syrup, and salt, and stir constantly until it comes to a slight boil
  • Lower the heat to medium-low and let the mixture boil for 3 minutes while stirring regularly
  • After 3 minutes, turn off the heat, and add the vanilla extract and the baking soda – the caramel sauce will bubble up as soon as you add the baking soda, so be careful!
  • Immediately stir the mixture as it bubbles up
  • Pour the butter toffee sauce over the popped popcorn and mix thoroughly with a rubber spatula until everything is coated with the sauce
  • Dump the butter toffee popcorn mixture to a baking sheet lined with silpat or parchment paper
  • Slightly flatten the mixture out and bake for 1 hour, giving it a stir every 20 minutes or so
  • After 1 hour, let the mixture rest and cool down until it comes to room temperature
  • Then break it into pieces and serve
  • Enjoy!

NOTE: You can also store butter toffee popcorn in an airtight container for around 1 to 2 weeks.

There you go! We told you it was easy, right? Some poppity pop, some mixy mix, and boom! You have a butter toffee popcorn that will blow your mind away and definitely satisfy your sweet tooth. So, next time you get sugar cravings or you want to invite your foodie friends to a movie night, just bust out a pot and a saucepan and whip this deliciousness up in a jiff!

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