Food Friday

Welcome to Food Friday!

I promised you a non-bacon themed food post and I am delivering! This week I am proud to present a recipe that people request all the time! Popcorn Balls. These are amazing, they are sweet and salty, portable and easy to eat! They are very similar to rice krispie treats, another one of my specialties! For these guys make sure you are heavy on the non- stick spray and have some wax paper to set them on to set. This recipe makes about 20 small popcorn balls, but you can make them any size you want. They can be store in an airtight container for about a week. I keep mine in individual snack bags, but large ones work too, or large containers with wax paper between layers!

To start gather your ingredients:

- popcorn- I air pop mine but you can also use the microwave kind. You need about 8 cups, 1/2 c seeds or about 2 bags from the microwave.
-2 tablespoons butter
-1 bag of marshmallows
-Non-stick spray
-wax paper
-pinch of salt

Pop your corn! Spray the bowl with non-stick spray first to prevent the marshmallow from sticking later. This part is pretty easy, after you are done pick out the un-popped seeds. You really don't want to bite down on one later. You might also want to spray the popcorn a little and add the pinch of salt. This step is for the air-popped only, it amps up the salty sweet combo awesomeness. If you are using microwaved corn, you don't need to salt it- just remember to spray the bowl!

Lay out some wax paper in a spot where the finished treats can set up!

Before you turn the heat on, spray the pan with non-stick spray. This will make clean up much easier. Now add the butter to a pan on the stove. Keep over medium heat until the butter is almost all melted.

Don't let the butter get to the brown stage.

Add your marshmallows.










Here I added a couple of drops of red to the partially melted marshmallows. My finaly product ended up as pink- you will see soon!
Keep stirring until the mixture is smooth and uniform.










When the mixture looks pretty smooth like this-->
You can stop stirring. Turn the heat on low










Pour most of the mixture into your popcorn bowl. Using a spoon covered in non-stick spray, mix the marshmallow and the popcorn, covering as best you can. Don't worry it doesn't have to be perfect, we can fix it up as we go.

Once you find that stirring isn't doing anything, grab your non-stick spray and cover your hands with it. I mean use A LOT. Like a gross amount, this is the only way to move quickly or else you will never get past the shaping steps. You might need to re-coat a couple of times!




Get your hands in there! Grab some popcorn mixture and shape it into a ball. Set a finished one on your wax paper. Be careful the mixture will still be pretty hot. As you can see I didn't have any wax paper I used a plastic bad and a Trader Joe's bag! They worked ok. As you continue shaping you might notice that you need more marshmallow mixture, grab some of the leftover that is still sitting over low heat and add it on. You can also add extra popcorn from the bottom that isn't coated yet to clumps that have too much marshmallow...wait too much... is that possible?

Keep going until you have used all the popcorn,

Once the treats have set store the popcorn balls

in airtight containers or in zip-top bags.

To clean up just soak the pot in some hot and soapy water, worked like a charm.

Happy Snacking!