When I think of popcorn I think ‘KIDS’. It’s a filling, healthy snack food that won’t break the budget and a little, once popped, goes a long way.
My popcorn maker has a bad habit of hitting me with hot un-popped popcorn kernels so of course I was surprised when I made a bowl of popcorn with the Kambrook ‘Little Chef’ Popcorn maker. They’ve obviously been working on improving that POP ability, I’m guessing improved heat and fan levels may be a factor. Seriously, I didn’t think you could improve on a popcorn popper, yet I had before me a light and fluffy bowl of popcorn that tempted little and big hands. Instead of a bowl with several tooth shattering kernels and a handful of half popped corn.
I got to thinking, there has to be a better use for popcorn than annoying other movie goers or stringing it on twine to hang around little kids necks right?
Check this out;
MOCHA POPCORN
Mocha popcorn with a few chocolate coated coffee beans.
Now this is a perfect movie snack.
Yep, I took my love of coffee and chocolate and added in popcorn to create a munch, buzzed, snack to die for. While not an original idea, I had never heard of such a great recipe until now.
Ingredients:
- 3 cups of sugar
- 1 cup (popcorn maker lid cup) of kernels, freshly popped
- 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
- 1 tablespoon of espresso coffee powder (fine powder not instant granules)
- 1 cup of milk
Instructions:
Mix sugar, cocoa, coffee powder and milk in saucepan, bring to boil, stirring occasionally. Until it reaches temperature of 120ºC with a candy thermometer (when mix becomes thickened).
Pour over popcorn, mix and spread evenly onto tray to cool sprinkle with icing sugar. Break into bite size pieces.
A ‘quickie’ method is to melt 1/4 cup of butter. Have 1/2 cup of espresso coffee powder and 1/2 cup of drinking chocolate plus 1/2 cup of castor sugar and 1/4 cup of icing sugar, well mixed in a bag. (Or cheat and use a powdered prepackaged mocha powder). Pour hot melted butter over popcorn, then add to mocha mix in bag. Mix (shake) thoroughly. ENJOY.
Chinese Five Spice Popcorn
After consuming ‘just a few’ morsels of caffeine loaded popcorn I was inspired to go a step further. Enter the world of savoury popcorn. Simple, I made a fresh bowl of popcorn and opened the spice cupboard. I’m seriously not good at cooking so anything new would be a trip into risky business and it would be PaBumpy who would be the one to either gag or give my concoction the thumbs up.
Chinese five spice is a popular spice with quite a potent flavour. I added heated ‘olive’ oil to the popcorn, mixed and sprinkled in Chinese Five Spice. I then handed the sample over for tasting.
Much to my surprise PaBear munched awa,y thoroughly enjoying his savoury popcorn snack. A win.
So there you go we have sweet Mocha popcorn and savoury Chinese Five Spice popcorn.
The only reason I swapped melted butter for heated olive oil is that it fits better with the ‘asian’ culinary theme. Lucky for me it worked!
(Popcorn machine provided by Kambrook)
