Recipe | Salted Caramel Popcorn Bars

The other day I was feeling making something tasty and effortless for me and my little brother when we had a day stuck in the house waiting for deliveries. Neither of us wanted to go out (read - change out of our pyjamas) so I went a-searching online for what I could whip up with what he had hanging about in our kitchen cupboards to keep us going through our grueling day of video-game playing, movie watching, (Gladiator with Russell Crowe, NOM) and halfheartedly doing chores our parents had set us (one of the down sides of being home for Easter).
I came across this little recipe for salted caramel popcorn bars and it was just the ticket! It was pretty easy and only took about 35 minutes from start to ready to eat. I made some changes to adapt it to a UK recipe, e.g swapping corn syrup for golden syrup but there was no problem and they came out wonderfully and really tasty! I also don't have a candy thermometer like the original recipe calls for but there are ways around that which I'll get to. Definitely give these a try if you like the sound of them, they were really delicious, even for my picky little brother!

Ingredients

4 cups popped popcorn
1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1/4 cup golden syrup

2 tbs flour (any kind) 

1 tbs Vanilla extract

Chocolate chips to taste

Coarse salt to taste

01. Heat the butter, syrup, sugar and flour in a pan over medium heat stirring occasionally. You want it to get to something called hard ball stage. To figure this out without a thermometer I had a mug of ice cold water and, every few minutes dropped a tiny amount of the mixture into it. You want it to form a ball that is hard but mouldable with your fingers (be VERY careful, unless it's cooled it will burn you and it will be horrible) for me this took about eight minutes. This picture was taken just after it reached the perfect consistency.

02. Drop in the vanilla essence and some of the salt and give it a quick stir before adding the popcorn and mixing thoroughly making sure all the pieces are nicely coated in the mixture. 

03. Into a tray lined with baking paper tip the mixture out and pat down evenly. I sprinkled on a little more salt at this stage, then let it start to cool until you can sprinkle over the chocolate chips without them melting.

04. Pop it in the fridge for a while and let it cool and harden before cutting into slices. Then keep an eye on them if, like me, you have a little gannet for a brother because they might just start disappearing.

So that's the recipe, not hard at all! Let me know if you give these a try or if you've got any similar recipes to recommend. 

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