No. 1 Caramel Corn

No. 1 is kind of a play on words, because each of the ingredients and the instructions has 1 in it, which makes it easy to remember in case you want to make some when you're at a friend's house and don't have your recipe with you :).  It's also a wonderful ooey, gooey totally yummy caramel sauce that doesn't sugar or go hard by the next day if you happen to have some left over, which isn't likely, and that you can also use as a dipping sauce for cut up fruit if you don't want to pour it over popcorn or make popcorn balls.  It's No. 1 at our house!  Hope it'll be No. 1 for you too!

No. 1 Caramel Corn

1 lb. (2-1/3 Cups) brown sugar
1 cube (1/2 Cup) butter
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 Cup light corn syrup

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  Boil for 1 minute.  Pour over approximately 3 gallons of popped corn. 

Remember those big old Tupperware bowls.  I still have mine (they last forever) and 3 gallons filled two of them with enough room to stir.  Just pour about half of the caramel sauce over each bowl and stir.  I also have a giant stainless steel bowl that I use for canning that all of the popcorn would fit in, but I found it easier to stir it into the popcorn and get it evenly coated in the smaller bowls.

To form the popcorn balls, though, I went ahead and poured the contents of the smaller bowls into the bigger bowl, buttered up my hands, and dived in.

Be sure you have some room temperature butter nearby when forming the popcorn balls, so you can butter up your hands often.  One recipe makes 16 big popcorn balls.

 

For you sharp-eyed readers who will notice that there are only 15 popcorn balls on the cookie sheet, that's because my husband snagged one to eat before I could get the picture taken :)  Enjoy!