Hello again my old friends!

I am excited to get back into cooking and baking! I have been off the map for a while and have now delivered my baby. Lincoln has been a joy to have in our home. It will be quite the adventure learning to mother a newborn all over again, but I cannot tell you how great it feels NOT to be pregnant anymore. Ha ha. :) I look forward to cooking up some goodies in my long lost kitchen again! It may be a few more weeks till I really feel up to cooking anything much though. 

Yesterday my cute daughter Elena and I made a batch, or four of the yummiest candy popcorn! I was surfing pinterest the other day and found a link to "Kool Aid" popcorn! Elena was all over that idea. She shopped for the flavors at the store with me and helped me make it. It was a really fun Mother-Daughter experience. It is super simple and easy. There are few ingredients so it isn't fussy or hard in any way! :)

Kool Aid Popcorn

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

1 cup light corn syrup

2/3 cup butter

2 packets Kool Aid (flavor of your choice)

1 teaspoon baking soda

6 quarts plain popcorn (about 4 large bags worth)

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 225 degrees. Remove middle rack, and just leave bottom rack in. Pre-pop all four bags of plain popcorn, and place in a really large heat resistant bowl. ** I used a large canner because it is heat resistant, and you can place it in the oven too! It worked perfect. :) In a small bowl combine 2 packets Kool Aid and 1 teaspoon baking soda. Set aside. In a medium saucepan combine sugar, corn syrup and butter. Bring to a boil. Let boil for three minutes stirring constantly, then remove from heat. Pour in Kool Aid and baking soda mixture to saucepan and stir in carefully. It will expand a bit from the baking soda so be careful not to get burned. Once it is mixed in well pour immediately over the popped popcorn in your large container. Stir well till all popcorn is evenly coated. Place popcorn in oven for 10 minutes. Remove and stir well again. Repeat the 10 minutes in oven 2 more times and stir in between each time frame. Once you are finished and popcorn has baked for a total of 30 minutes, stir the final time and remove from pot to cool. ** I laid out three sheets of parchment paper on my counter and spread out the popcorn to cool there. You want to separate out the popcorn into small clusters while it is still hot or it will break and not look as pretty if you do that if it is already cooled FYI. :) 

Voila! You now have a highly addictive substance of pure taste bud pleasure!! Enjoy! 

In this mixture pictured above, I used Cherry, Lemon-Lime, Grape and Orange flavored Kool Aid packets. I made 4 batches and it made a TON of popcorn! I spread the love around to some friends and family. Yum!

Click HERE to see where I found this recipe.