If you've been to The Chopping Block, you know we love to sample out the products we carry in our retail stores. We usually offer a variety of popcorn with different seasonings such as our famous Truffle Salt Popcorn, which is so good! But when I was recently tasked with making the store's sample, I opted for a sweet popcorn because I wanted it to be different.
I love the combination of sweet and salty flavors, so I made a Salted Chocolate Caramel Popcorn recipe I found on diethood.com.
Here's how you can recreate this at home:
I started by making the popcorn with grapeseed oil, which we sell at The Chopping Block. Once I popped the popcorn, I set it aside and gathered my mise en place, which means everything in its place, and preheated my oven to 300 degrees.
I used butter, light corn syrup, salt, baking soda, Nielsen Massey Madagascar bourbon vanilla and brown sugar to make the caramel. I put all the ingredients in a deep saucepan on medium high heat, stirring the caramel until it began to boil.
Once the caramel started to boil, I let it boil for two minutes before I turned the heat down. Once my caramel was ready, I added the popcorn back to the pot. I mixed the popcorn in the caramel over very low heat. Most recipes will instruct you to pour the caramel over the popcorn and mix it in, but I've found that the caramel starts to harden. That's great if you’re making candy, but not so great if you are making popcorn.
After coating the popcorn with the caramel sauce, I added in the chocolate chips and tossed to coat. The idea here is to coat the now caramel popcorn completely with chocolate, which adds an amazing layer of flavor. Once you have completely coated the popcorn, spread it out on a parchment paper lined sheet tray and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Take the popcorn out of the oven and sprinkle it with sea salt (I especially love the Maldon Sea Salt we carry in our stores) immediately and let the popcorn cool. Once it cools, you're in caramel-chocolaty heaven!
You can pick up the vanilla, Callebaut Chocolate and sea salt at The Chopping Block.
If you have a sweet tooth like me, you'll want to check out our upcoming baking classes such as Cupcake Boot Camp, Macaron Workshop or Pie & Tart Boot Camp.
