Caramel Corn is Coming to Town

Oven Caramel Corn Transcript

what food always makes you think of the perfect Christmas day oh there's so many let's see that book of Lifesavers that we always got in our stocking ooh a yummy breakfast casserole to start the day and let me see oh yeah candy canes oh yes I remember all of those but today's recipe is not one of them today we are going to make the ever popular Christmas caramel corn oh okay we'll let the festivities begin welcome to Mom's Wooden Spoon get your apron on and your fanny flicker ready as we cook up some nostalgia ooh yummy

hi this is Carrie and this is Kristen and Merry Christmas Merry Christmas everyone we have taken another recipe from Mary's 1974 Christmas memo Christmas spectacular oh it totally was she even didn't even put like her normal logo with picture on the top it was front and back jam packed of the best Christmas recipes you may want to make for yourself and your loved ones yes and this is the same one that our 24 hour party salad came from exactly yep um this time we're gonna make oven baked caramel corn because that is so Christmassy it screams Christmas to me it did scream something to me what it screamed to me how do you pronounce caramel right I think it's regional I did ask my dad how he pronounces it he was like uh the way any good Northwest Ohioan would pronounce it caramel but it is in fact not spelled caramel no it's spelled caramel yeah so I think we're probably wrong I think we're probably wrong because when we looked it up online Carrie and I spent a long time looking this up because we wondered because I have friends who say it differently and I have people that I know from Ohio that say it differently so I wonder if it's just the house you grew up in yep I don't know but we're gonna mispronounce it as caramel throughout this recipe because well it's what we do that's right it's probably not the last time that we'll mispronounce something oh no we'll mess up we'll do something horrific yeah I'm pretty sure yeah I'd say go I'd go with rather sooner than later actually yeah so right now caramel it is so one of the first things obviously that you need to do when making caramel corn is make a lot of popcorn yes uh the second thing you need to do is make a caramel sauce and in this case we're using butter and brown sugar and corn syrup and various delightful additions to that yeah a little bit of salt of course yep so I think the first thing I'm going to do is go ahead and get some popcorn seeds into the popper now I have the best popcorn popper of all time it is an avocado green version of the burnt orange version that we grew up with and um Kristen found it for me years ago and it is the only popcorn popper that I use so of course that's what we're using here because the popcorn's the best I mean I found this popcorn popper unopened in a thrift store it even had the original pack of Jiffy popcorn in it I dared Carrie to eat it I dared Carrie to pop the seeds from the 1970s she refused I did but as it turns out popcorn's been around forever and they found popcorn kernels from like Egyptian times yeah that you could still pop so apparently a 1970 seed no biggie ya should have done it it could have been a 4 000 year old seed that's true talk about some stale popcorn okay so I'm going to pour it in so give me just a second this could be loud crunchy oh that was loud I bet it was yeah um and we'll get that plugged in and start popping put the lid on first Carrie we don't want it going everywhere good thinking all right so we'll get that plugged in and get it going but when I was so excited to pull out old avocado green popper oh yes it did get me thinking about some of the other popcorn poppers that I have seen throughout time me too ooh okay and so what was your favorite popcorn popper that you thought that we should own well I always wanted to own this and when I talked to my husband about it his family did they were so lucky they were it was the Hamilton Beach popcorn popper that you put butter in on the top and as you made the popcorn the butter dripped down on top of the popcorn was it the one with the big gold dome yes and guess who advertised it I can't imagine Joe Namath really yes holy cow I don't recall that at all oh yes so cool I actually found online one of the original advertisements where Joe is advertising this popcorn one of them he had a broken leg and he's like well this is so easy I can just make this popcorn on my little stand next to my reclining chair I'm like because everybody makes popcorn next to the reclining chair talk about using what you got right now right oh that's hilarious there was another one where a little boy was there sorry and he said tell him Joe sent ya

okay so that is not the popcorn popper that I wanted oh what did you want  I wanted the one that stood upright and it had the yellow chute so the popcorn would come up and then out the chute and you could position it so it just shoot it right into your bowl yeah was that an air power I think they were yes as I was sharing my love of popcorn poppers I was talking to one of my friends and she had a different popcorn popper that she was very proud of oh and she found a picture of it it looks like a covered it wagon no had wheels on it and I'm like did the wheels turn yes yes they did so cool yes and so the covered wagon part was like the yellow dome of your most wanted popcorn popper so when you got all done you'd flip it over you could melt the butter into your popcorn yeah and then you had a lovely bowl oh my gosh oh there it goes it's starting to pop oh great yay okay we're gonna have delicious popcorn in just a few minutes it smells yummy oh there's nothing better than the smell of popping popcorn and to me there's nothing better than the sound of the popcorn in that metal avocado green popcorn popper you're right it just makes a welcoming sound well you know deliciousness is going to follow anytime soon yes absolutely yes all right so the popcorn's popping I'm going to start to make the caramel I'm going to add all the ingredients into the little pan here and then we have to take it over the stove and cook it till it's bubbling okay all right so I'm adding let's see a cup of brown sugar and then I need to add a quarter of a cup of the corn syrup which is gonna take forever and butter I'll throw that in there oh thank you so I was also curious the difference between caramel and toffee oh yeah and butterscotch because they're all very similar and very delicious and oh very delicious so toffee is uh sugar with butter that's a hallmark of toffee as I add butter into our caramel oh right does caramel not have butter usually not usually oh and a hallmark of caramel is white sugar and your ingredients and a hallmark of butterscotch is brown sugar wow and so we're making a combo we're making making a butterscotch toffee we're really not making caramel at all that's true well then it doesn't matter how we pronounce it does it we're making we're making what toffeemel scotch toffeemelscotch yeah I was just gonna go toffee scotch that's better Carrie

you know this caramel corn may not scream Christmas but the idea of getting caramel corn as a gift for Christmas kind of came about when our dad was a principal oh do you remember oh yes I remember he back in the day we got gifts galore and mostly they were baked goods or sugary treats luckiest kids in the world our mom not a baker no she never we did not have homemade goodies that we recall no at the holidays at all but we did because of all of these lovely lovely parents who made these treats for dad and so he would bring so many home and remember it was Ohio in the winter so the garage was really cold he had a work bench in the garage and all those goodies went on the workbench and so even if our mom said no you may not have any treats you could sneak off into the garage shut the door go pull off the little cling wrap off of a goodie and just pop some in your mouth because what was she thinking why else were we in the garage like we really pulled one over on her oh the kids are just gonna go hang out in the freezing cold garage momentarily as we're shoving treats into our mouth an epic pace and then when it wasn't Christmas mom would buy huge containers of this diet Faygo drink and she'd buy all different flavors but the one that just fascinated me was called diet Frosh Faygo Frosh and it was green and if I remember correctly in my mind it was like a milky green it probably wasn't okay so in my mind it was almost like a neon yes glowy green oh it was definitely that bright right and it looked so good so I would sneak out into the garage and I would crack open that that top and crank it open and take a little sip and it was sweetened with saccharin so I immediately hated it it was grossed out so I put the lid back on and left it and fooled her once again so she must have thought why is this Faygo Frosh going flat all the time well she would have known it was open because it didn't crack that's true right right so she'd go out and go how did this get open she must have known it was me or you right you like all the Christmas cookies are magically disappearing and the Faygo Frosh is open hmm is it my spouse or my children never taken a sip of Faygo Frosh that's hilarious I mean oh as a kid you think you're so sneaky I did and you never know no so one of my favorite favorite things that dad would get as a Christmas gift yes was the homemade Chex Mix ooh yes which is so much better than the stuff you buy in the store yeah and here's why okay sometimes you'd get a little patch where the butter and Worcestershire mixture that you use to season the Chex Mix when you make it homemade would be a little extra strong on one of the little Chex pieces oh that was the best part I remember that yeah my favorite also used Chex but and it was Puppy Chow oh yes I didn't even know such a delicacy existed oh my gosh I don't think I've ever had it since like I think that was I think one year we got it I pretty much called dibs refused to share it with anybody ate it all and was so excited to get it the next year which never happened oh stupid I've never made it for myself right I can't fathom it's all that hard I don't think so I think it's peanut butter and chocolate and powdered sugar yeah and then powdered sugar and rice Chex right yeah you think I'd make it for myself one would think you would alas have not alas I know well should we get that um caramel sauce a bubblin' on the stove yes let's read the directions here it says to cook until it bubbles around the edges and cook for five minutes more yeah oh yeah your gonna have to watch the clock on this one I will and in the meantime when it all comes off the stove we're gonna add some baking soda into it which should make it nice and bubbly and frothy ooh it should you know I was just watching uh something online about somebody who was making Honeycomb that candy Honeycomb the Great British Bake Off I probably was watching that yes that's where I saw honeycomb and they mixed the baking soda in to make it get all fluffy it's like chemical genius it is and then they kind of pour it out on a cool cookie sheet yes let it cool and then one of the nice things to do is to dip it in chocolate they break it all up yes they have to break it all up first yes yep so it's a light fluffy delicate treat and so I I wonder why we're putting the baking soda into this I guess maybe so that we don't have super super hard crunchy pieces on the popcorn yeah I'm I'm wondering if it'll make it cover the popcorn better maybe yeah because of the little foamy I don't know I guess we'll find out Mary thus far has not stirred us wrong has not stirred us wrong that was awesome well you know as we were talking about Christmas I looked up the most popular toys in 1974 and we had them the first one I was so excited I know we did not get this in 1974 because you would have been what one just just turned just turned one and I would have been four and so I know we didn't have this but Carrie it was the McDonald's Playskool toy oh oh yeah and it came with the little trays so that you could go through the drive-through and they'd pop out the little tray and then you could return them somewhere else it was cool you put the little McDonald worker guy in this little seat and you slid back and forth back and forth and that's what popped the trays oh I remember I bought many a happy meal at that at that little Playskool McDonalds oh yes I did do you remember that you could push a little button or pull a little lever on the cash register to go ch-ching so cool it was yeah it was the best oh a merry-go-round on the outside that was just fun I remember playing with that a lot yeah as do I it was definitely a winner in our house all right so what else you got for 1974 Christmas gifts okay um you know oddly enough a magic eight ball was really popular yes I didn't know it had been around and popular quite that long no I think it was made like oddly enough in the 40s or 50s oh really kinda like the slinky yes but it was really popular in the 70s and I'm sure I didn't get mine in 1974 I know I didn't to be honest because I found pictures of us in 1974 opening up our gifts from Santa oh my gosh yeah magic eight not a magic eight ball it was let's see Play-Doh and then the Play-Doh what was that called that little machine that you would push down and it would squirt the Play-Doh out in different shapes oh I don't remember what it is called yeah I remember I got one of those years later and it was a barber shop I remember that they had holes and then you could well it had a little guy it had a little character yes and you just cranked the little barber chair and it would have this plunger that came up into the person it would push that dough out the holes the holes in his head and give him hair that you could then cut or you could put a little cap on it and give them a quote perm and make their hair all curly no oh my gosh I played with that ad nauseam I forgot about that well not 74 though you know I'm cooking this I didn't check the timer so I'm a little bit nervous I have a magic 8-ball now it's not my original one from the 1970s why don't you shake that magic 8-ball okay let's see let's ask it a question magic 8-ball is this caramel going to turn out or is Kristen going to ruin it so I guess we should say is this caramel going to turn out well I like is Kristen going to ruin the caramel oh magic eight ball and it says outlook good I'm gonna ruin it oh no we may need to get out well maybe it said that because we're not actually making let's try again yeah is Kristen going to ruin this 

toffscotch don't count on it oh see that's better it's really all about asking the right questions I think it really is were there any other 74 toys well there's one that came out in 73 but I think when I look at the pictures of us at Christmas 1974 looks like I got it oh it is Baby Alive oh my gosh classic oh yes now I remember if you weren't careful and you didn't clean the baby alive out after you fed it the food it would get all this dried gunkied up food like stuck in the innards of the Baby Alive and do you remember how mom used Baby Alive for you when you were a little girl I I've heard tell you apparently I was an unwilling participant in potty training yes and Baby Alive and circus peanuts featured heavy in the trying to con me into oh very much potty training yep so mom would take the Baby Alive doll and she found a plastic or a rubber cork that was the size of the Baby Alive's bottom hole down there and she would pour kool-aid kool-aid lemonade um in the baby's mouth and then would pull the plug and go see Baby Alive goes pee pee potty oh my gosh so all I know is growing up I heard that Kristen saw my mom it was you know cloth diapers Kristen saw my mom cleaning out a diaper in the toilet yes and was grossed out and my mom said well honey if you'd go potty in the toilet I wouldn't need to do this and ever so agreeable Kristen said oh okay and she was potty trained me not so agreeable not so much this was like a day of torture for Carrie it was dad took me off somewhere fun and Carrie and mom did nothing but drink kool-aid lemonade give Baby Alive kool-aid lemonade and sit on the potty all day and we drew pictures of potties I don't have any memory of it whatsoever talked about potties yes but you all will be proud to know that I do now go pee pee in the potties you are such a good girl such a good girl it worked it worked yeah so have we been chatting for five minutes because I think we might have been oh I haven't looked at the clock yeah I haven't either does it look thick enough it looks really good it looks like um we're probably ready to add the baking soda now we're going to add the baking soda and then I think we need to come over quickly and add it into this popcorn I'm thinking maybe let's bring the pot here add the soda and then uh pour yes so you've already poured all the popcorn into the bowl we needed 15 cups yeah 15 cups of popcorn which is not really a lot of kernels yeah that's odd no I think I used uh three quarters cup of kernels and I had plenty of leftover after weeding out the old maids yes which I just learned is the name for the unpopped kernels which is kind of mean but it's what they're called and here's a spoon for you to stir up all right popcorn with I did not create the term I'm just passing it on folks yeah okay I'm gonna add the baking soda in and oh shoot and I sprinkled it everywhere all right stir and bring that bad boy over here and let's see take it off the heat here it's not fluffing all up like I expected it to it's no honeycomb is that what you're saying no the honeycomb you know gets huge it does it's just an immediate reaction yeah okay so how about if I drizzle some over slowly and then you stir and then oh my gosh there's a lot of caramel oh which is good because that's why holy moly I don't always love homemade caramel corn because I always feel like it could use some more caramel I agree the more caramel the better yes it was just funny so I was telling my mom that we were making uh caramel corn today and then I started laughing and I'm like mom younger you must have really had a huge love of caramel corn and she's like what do you mean I said well as I was looking through these Mary's Memos you starred and underlined at least three caramel corn recipes oh she did and on top of it you took a Mary's Memo crossed out Mary's recipes on the front and wrote yet another caramel corn recipe on the back that is a travesty I'm just saying and I said I'm pretty sure you never made a one of those recipes she's like well they're so messy they are we're making a hot mess right now we agree with you mom we get it but you know I'm really pleased with how much caramel is on this this looks really good some fell out and now it's falling in my mouth and so now we have to put it we have to split it up between two 9x13  9x13 baking dishes all right so shall we just scooper yeah how about I lift the bowl good idea and you scoop half oh my gosh teamwork makes the dream work oh that is so bad okay we're scooping about half of it into this pan so as we scoop this into a 9x13 pan I have fond memories of popcorn being found in a different kind of container brown paper bag so my brain popcorn and brown paper bags are synonymous oh yeah so I will say that the one caramel corn recipe that mom wrote on the back of the Mary's Memo did use a brown paper bag yes and she liked that because it kind of contained the mess right yes that was the only one she used and so that was good but I remember making um popcorn and putting it in brown paper bags to take to the drive in oh yeah and then the bag would have like the the marbly oil on the outside it did yes

oh man it was great what are the directions we're gonna throw it in a 210 degree oven and then it is going to sit in the oven for an hour woah but we do have to stir it every 15 minutes okay and then we're going to store it in an airtight container and you will definitely want to look at the pictures because Kristen found a fabulous retro airtight container it's not so retro that you may actually still use it in your kitchen but it's definitely joyously retro we'll see you guys in a minute with some hot oven baked caramel corn the popcorn is out of the oven oh yeah the house smells so yummy buttery sweet yum and it looks crunchy it does I can't wait to kind of stir it up one last time and see how it sounds I think so one of my complaints about homemade caramel corn yeah though it's minor and would not stop me from eating caramel corn right but one of my complaints would be that you get chunks that are almost wet with caramel yeah and then you have chunks that there's just nothing on it at all I hate those parts that's why I really don't love homemade caramel corn because it's always disappointing to me it kind of is the idea is amazing yes the execution is less than stellar yes and so I'm hoping that because we baked it in the oven then maybe we dried out those wet bits yes and we're able to coat them up a little bit better yes as I was stirring it that last 15 minutes it was starting to sound kind of hard and there was less stickiness oh I can't wait to see what happens yeah me too I can't wait to try but it needs to cool a little bit before we taste test it and put it in the bowl yeah I'm afraid that if we taste test it while the caramel or caramel it's still warm that it is just going to cement itself to your teeth yes or glue our mouths shut and that's really bad for a podcast maybe good for a sister bad for a podcast

so true well as we were making this caramel corn yes I was looking at it and thinking it reminded me of those gigantic buckets of popcorn with the little dividers in it where you'd get buttered and cheese and caramel corn all in one oh yeah and I think they were frequently sold as um fundraisers for schools and I think the boy scouts did it a lot yes I think you're right but you know our stepsister Kim taught me something really cool with those big buckets of popcorn those big tins of popcorn and they're from Chicago and so she taught me the Chicago way to eat those buckets of popcorn you take a little pinch of the cheese with a little pinch of the caramel corn and eat it together salty sweet at its finest it is so good it is the Chicago way oh I did not know that was the Chicago way yes it is a delightful way for sure it is who would have thunk that you would want to actually eat the cheese popcorn with the caramel right popcorn well so the popcorn bucket and the fundraiser got me thinking I remember doing fundraisers as a kid yeah couldn't quite remember back as far as the 70s what were the fundraisers of the times right I don't remember the fundraisers at all okay well I remember doing them I remember going door to door oh yes I remember doing them I remember my prize that I won when we sold them really yes because we had it in the bathroom that had that countertop that had the 1800s advertisements on it your grand prize was in there my grand prize was an oil lamp what every kid loves an oil lamp I know right and I can't remember what was on the front but it was old-fashioned looking and the oil in it smelled like apple pie wow mom had that on the back of the toilet in that little bathroom how perfect though it matched the countertop it did and you know kind of take out the stink a little bit so my grand prize for fundraising was in the bathroom

oil lamp what kid doesn't want to win that well so I looked up some fundraisers they had you sell animal shaped candles and one of those animals there was an owl and one of them was this droopy dog oh in hot pink in hot pink in hot pink so there's a total droopy face it must have been a basset hound yeah all in hot pink I totally remembered that dog well so that wasn't a prize that was something that went door-to-door so you would go to a housewives door and said hey I want you to buy this bright pink droopy dog because that'll go with your decor they did have other animals like you could go with the owl okay they they had other things that I looked over because it had no memory value to me right but as a kid a bright pink droopy dog oh my gosh the height of amazingness that's awesome yes well I think these are probably cool enough to start putting in the bowls right I'm gonna work on this okay let's see how it sounds

oh that sounds crunchy it sounds delicious I'm gonna start putting it in the bowl well this would be a beautiful little treat this really would make a nice little gift wrapped up in a little cellophane bag for your school principal um yes and then you have two little girls who sneak out into the garage and steal bites of it and their parents never know never ever know and maybe they take a little sip of Faygo Frosh to wet their whistle after they get all that sweet I have to say that as I'm looking at this popcorn it reminds me of a song it's an ear worm song from Barney oh no oh yeah and it goes and you'll hate me because you're stuck with it popcorn is really neat it's fun to make and it's fun to eat if I sing it again it'll never leave your brain so you better not do that I'm not going to but I have to say this popcorn was fun to make and I'm pretty sure it's going to be fun to eat I cannot wait to eat it and I certainly would not have been listening to that song in 1974 because Barney wasn't even out then no what I would have been doing is I would have had this gigantic pair of headphones on and I would have been plugged in to this gigantic radio stereo system that we had going all along one wall in our living room I mean it was huge it was the size of a big dresser yes and it had a turntable it did and it had a radio in it and the turntable was wiggly jiggly do you remember that yes yes and I think it was to kind of balance it out so that it would be smoother sounding and we had all kinds of old Christmas albums probably from the 50s and the 60s they were the worst I loved them really and so yes I would drag a beanbag chair over there sit in front of that gigantor stereo system plug these huge headset into the top of it because you had to sit really close because the cord from the headset was not very long no and so I plug in and I would listen to all that cool retro for us in the 1970s Christmas music and just tune out the world if I had a bowl of this delicious caramel corn while I was doing that it would have been pure Christmas nirvana Carrie oh it would have been oh yeah easily yeah well do you want to dig in and try it oh you know I do absolutely okay how about if I hum a Christmas tune as you do that and you can pretend that is that a no no okay let's take my silence as a as a non-agreement okay I'm gonna dig right in yeah take a bite and grab a couple and while she chews away which I don't hear terrible crunching from her but I see like a look of ecstasy that just crossed her face that is so good is it oh my gosh yes not disappointing at all no it is so crunchy and buttery and it's well covered and the texture is fantastic the butter oh my gosh this is delicious I would serve that in a heartbeat I would not be embarrassed to give it as a gift no not at all I would be reluctant to give it as a gift because you'd want to keep it for yourself oh wholeheartedly that is yes yummy and if we waited or if we did not wait for it to cool prior to it completely cooling we probably could have put like little Christmas sprinkles on the top for sure just to add a little holiday flavor too it yeah that might be fun what a treat that is it for this episode if you would like to see pictures of the food we cooked today this delicious caramel corn or a lot of other fun stuff including some pictures of Kristen and Carrie from 1974 Christmas head on over to momswoodenspoon.com Merry Christmas everyone

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