Auntie Knows Best - Butterscotch "Caramel" Corn

Caramel corn...   The mere mention of it causes me to swoon.  I love caramel corn in all of it's "sincarnations".  I can remember being in the 4-H barn at the Multnomah county fair (yes, I was in 4-H) laying on a bale of straw with a stomach ache because I had consumed massive quantities of the stuff out on the midway.   It never stopped me though, I was right back out there the next day, eating my fill of the most decadent of all popcorn's manifestations. 

As a result of this somewhat sordid past with Caramel corn, I have developed certain likes and dislikes when it comes to "dressing" popped corn with candy syrup.  I prefer that the corn be lightly coated.  Not all gloppy and toffee like, with a bit of popped corn here and there.  And I like a little salt with my syrup to cut the sweetness.  This is why Kettle Corn is one of my top 3.

Another thing I dislike immensely is nuts in my caramel corn.  I know, I know... I like nuts in everything, just not in caramel corn.  Cracker Jack is out.

But my biggest dislike is when the caramel syrup is WAY too dark, and there is a bitterness to it.  Not festive at all.  So I tend to like the lighter caramels.

Which brings me to my most favorite Caramel Corn in the world, aside from the awesome stuff at that little shop in Lloyd Center that has been there since my parents were little, my Auntie Patsy's Butterscotch Caramel Corn.  It's absolutely perfect and delicious every single time.  The only problem is that it's dangerous... You see, it's so easy to make, that you will be making and eating it ALL the time.   :)

Why do I call it Butterscotch Caramel corn?  Well, it starts out as a Butterscotch sauce (Brown Sugar and Butter, but no Scotch).  Unlike the sauce I use for Poached Pears though, this is cooked to the Hard ball stage.  At which point you do a little "Cinder Toffee" magic to lighten the mixture before folding the sauce into the popcorn.  Most "Caramel" corn starts with granulated sugar that is then cooked to the "caramel" stage before being poured over the popped corn.  This can lead to overly dark caramel and that bitter flavor, as well as a slightly burnt smell, that I don't like.  It also does weird things to the popped corn when you pour 310 degree syrup over it.  The nice 255 degree syrup is much kinder to your Orville Reddenbacher, leaving the popped corn nice and fluffy without a secondary "cooked" flavor or shriveling it up due to heat.

The coolest part though, is that it is finished in the oven. I mean, honestly, what could possibly be easier? (this is why it's dangerous)

What you end up with is a delicately crisp Popcorn with a mere sheen of crunchy butterscotch caramel deliciousness coating the outside.   It's just Pure Heaven!

Auntie Patsy's Butterscotch Caramel Corn

7 quarts (6.5 oz) (185g) Popped Popcorn  (1 quart of popped corn weighs about .9 oz)
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Kosher Salt
1/4 tsp Cream of Tarter
1 cup (8 oz) (226g) Unsalted Butter
1 cup (7.1 oz) (200g) Brown Sugar, packed
1 cup (7.2 oz) (205g) Dark Brown Sugar, packed (Dark Brown weighs a little more)
1/2 cup (4 oz) (118 ml) Orange Blossom Honey (by weight, that is 6 oz or 170g)

Pop all of the popcorn, filling a large bowl, and set aside.

(I "pop" each batch into a smaller bowl so I can keep the old maids to a minimum)

Preheat the oven to 200 F (94 C) degrees and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a small bowl, whisk Baking Soda, Salt and Cream of Tarter together, set aside.

In a large, heavy bottomed saucepan, melt the Butter.

Once melted, add the Sugars and the Honey.

Bring to a boil over medium heat.

Continue boiling for about 5 minutes or until the temperature reaches 255 F (124 C) degrees (just shy of hard ball)

Remove from the heat and stir in the Baking Soda mixture.

The syrup will get all foamy and pale as the CO2 is released. (this lightens the syrup, making it easier to pour, and mix with the popcorn)

Pour the syrup over the popcorn.

Gently fold the syrup over the popped corn with a large wooden spoon to coat evenly. 

Spread the caramel corn out on a couple of parchment lined baking sheets.

Bake in the oven for 1 hour, swapping the position of the baking sheets at 30 minutes.

Let cool on the counter for 20 minutes to firm up into a slab o' Caramel Corn.

Simply break apart and enjoy!

mmmmmm  a chunk of butterscotchy caramel deliciousness!  If you will excuse me now, I have an appointment with a rather large piece and a cup of coffee.  :) 

Mangia!!
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Cool Beans! - Empowering The People

To everyone out there in the Blog-verse, this is a really long one.... But your patience with my meandering mind will be rewarded......

I know it will come as a surprise to you all, that I tend to be just a little...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

opinionated about food & wine. (This is where you raise the back of your hand to your mouth and gasp in utter shock and dismay) ;)

But, (you can drop your hand now) what should not come as a surprise is that I absolutely adore coffee in all it's shapes & forms... In fact, I have 3 more posts, regarding various brewing methods, waiting in the wings, but they are all in various states of incompleteness. LOL

However, one that I have finally completed, as you may have guessed, has to do with my slightly cryptic Something Wicked-Awesome, This way Comes post.

A long time ago (10 months) in a galaxy far far away (San Diego).... I was wandering through the concrete jungle (Gaslamp Quarter) when I chanced across my favorite watering hole (Pannikin). The beauty of Pannikin is that they roast their own coffee (in the back), but on THIS day, they happened to have a small 1 lb roaster sitting out front of the shop. It was happily tumbling some green beans around a glass chamber, using hot air to roast the coffee. That was when the gigantic light bulb went off above my head. (blinding all innocent unsuspecting pedestrians within a 3 block radius)

If spinning hot air is a common method of roasting coffee, then why could you not use a Hot air popcorn popper?

Being somewhat familiar with popcorn mechanics, I assumed that the element would provide enough heat. I mean it's hot enough to transform the water in the popcorn into steam thus producing that satisfying "POP" sound and providing light and fluffy kernels that are much more palatable than their un-popped counterparts. But would the fan be strong enough to move the coffee beans around the chamber properly to provide an even roast? Or worse than uneven roasting, would the beans sit there and burn? Yikes! These were all questions that I took to the Oracle? (The Internet) So I began to read and read and read.... And then a bunch of life altering stuff happened and experimentation was halted.

So now it is 10 months later, and I have a functioning Hot air popper of the proper design and here we go!!!!!

The Coffee - I ordered from 2 places... Mr. Green Beans and U-Roast-Em. Armed with 1 lb each of Mexican Chiapas and Yemen Mocha Harazi

as well as Gualamalan Huehuetenango and Tanzanian (not peaberry - Highly overrated and inconsistent)

I chose to start with my favorite - Guatamalan Huehuetenango (from further north than Antigua) The Chiapas and Huehuetenango are similar coffees as they are geographically close, however the Huehuetenango (way-way-teh-nawn-go) has a little more body than the Chiapas - A peppery aroma; almost smoky that blends well with the savory spiciness. Very mild in acidity. Hinting at Chocolate and Caramel. THIS is my cup of standard "Joe"; Sadly, most pre-roasted Huehuetenango is on the lighter side... Just like Antigua... But I like mine just shy of "Full city" (medium dark).

I hear a questions forming.... "Do you have to roast all 4 lbs of that coffee?" and "How are you gonna drink that much coffee before it becomes stale?"
Well as to the first one.... Nope, unlike roasted coffee, green coffee will store, without issue, at room temperature for a year; where as roasted coffee goes stale in about 1 week. Pretty wicked awesome huh?

As for the second question.... heh heh... I drink A LOT of coffee... ;)

OK, so we have Green Coffee and a Hot Air Popper - Speaking of which... I recommend that it be at least 1250 watts, although the holy grail of air poppers seems to be West Bend's "The Poppery" 1500 watt model. The most important thing is the design. The Proctor-Silex and West Bend models have vents in the sides and blow around the bottom of the chamber creating a vortex, thus mixing the beans for a more even roast...

Where as the Presto models have a screen in the bottom and they blow up. This can dislodge your beans from the chamber, blowing them out of the popper or worse, possibly catching the resulting chaff on fire. (this may be an urban legend, but I am not taking any chances)

You are going to need 4 more things to produce your own home roasted coffee. Though the last one is optional (dependent on weather) You need a large stainless bowl to catch the chaff, a wooden spoon, for stirring at the beginning, and a colander of some type, preferably mesh, to shake your beans while they cool. Now IF the weather outside is cold and wet, you will need a box that is big enough to hold the bowl and the popper; this will protect the popper from the outside chill.

Which brings us to the only issue I have found with roasting your own coffee. You will WANT to be outside. By some strange twist of quantum mechanics the chaff resulting from the roasting process smells like toasted dirty socks. I am sure that all eaters of Microwave Popcorn out there are snickering up their sleeves right now... LOL

Your clothes will inevitably smell like the chaff after your done. Yeah, it's a somewhat smelly job, but your persistence will be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams.

Plan ahead, cause your coffee, as good as it will smell, once it's away from the toasted chaff, it will have to "Gas-Off" for 24 - 48 hours. I don't like this term, so I will now refer to it as "ripening".

So, let us begin.

Go ahead and set up your popper and chaff bowl in the box, making sure that your wooden spoon is handy.

Oh, and in the interest of perpetual caffeination, make sure your travel mug is filled with some sort of brewed deliciousness. LOL

Measure out 85 grams of coffee......

As luck would have it, this is about 1/2 cup...

or the same amount that just happens to fit in the butter warmer. (Serendipitous, huh?)

Turn the popper on, and wait about 30 - 45 seconds for it to warm up before pouring your green coffee into the cylinder.

Let them kind of hang out for about 30 seconds, just kind of spinnin' round and round.

I periodically stir mine with the handle of the wooden spoon, with the "lid" off......

Until it turns yellow...

(it will already be blowing chaff at you, to watch your eyes)

Then place the hood on and listen. (don't keep removing the butter melter like I did, I was just trying to get pictures. You want to keep the heat IN the popper)

After about 3-5 minutes you will hear a popping sound, though to me it sounds more like a "tink" (kind of like the sound little tiny pebbles make against the glass of a second story window, being thrown by a love sick teenage boy in his parachute pants at 1:30 am) eh, hem... Never mind.

This sound is called "First Crack" and is about where "City Roast" occurs, being a medium roast.

For Huehuetenango, this is where most roasters stop, I took mine on to the next level and continued roasting for an additional 2 -3 minutes...

Until I thought the beans were dark enough for me....

You can take them further to the "Second Crack" stage, which is a much deeper sound than the First Crack "tink"..... This is called "Full City" roast, being a dark roast, and the beans begin to release more of their oils to the surface making the beans slightly shiny. (this is where most espresso blends are taken to)

Photo courtesy of my brother Chris -- Full City Roasted Mocha Java and green Mocha Java

If you let them go beyond "Second Crack", you start moving into the French Roast; but at this point not only are most of oils on the surface of the bean, but they being to carbonize. (a little too dark for me)

Photo courtesy of my brother Chris -- his French Roast

When you have achieved your favorite roasting stage (OK, I tried timing it, but I did 5 batches of coffee and all the times were very different.... So sadly, all I can do is explain the process as best I can) Turn off the popper and quickly dump the beans into your mesh colander.

Begin shaking them back and forth....

In an effort to cool them down as quickly as possible..... This will minimize the further roasting that occurs from the heat "Carry Over".

You will notice that the beans appear larger.... They expand quite a bit as they roast. (but still not as fluffy as popcorn)

Photos courtesy of my brother Chris, again

Once cooled, you will need to let your roast "Ripen" by allowing the beans to sit and throw off CO2 for about 48 hours. I used the handy 1 way valve bags,

but you can also store them in a glass canning jar with a few holes punched in the lid...

Yes my friends, breathe new life into that old Hot Air Popper, never purchase stale coffee beans from the store or your local coffee shop, again! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Cool Beans, huh?
~~

For more information on roasting your own coffee beans in an Air Popper, check out Sweet Maria's.
I have already made 1 modification thanks to my brother's experiments... (we were both having a blast trying this out) I have covered the inside of the lid with aluminum foil to reflect heat back into the popper.

There are a few modifications I will be making to my popper in the near future... by installing a thermometer so I can judge a little easier by watching the temperature of the beans.

Sah-WEET!

Something Wicked Awesome, This Way Comes!

This is a Hot Air Popper. One of the greatest inventions of the 80's as far as I am concerned. Granted, they did start appearing in the late 70's, but we didn't get one until about 1981, I think.

Sadly these noisy machines have been replaced by the convenience of pre-packaged Microwave popcorn. (Which always seems to smell like toasted dirty socks) Needless to say, I don't eat much microwaved popcorn.

But all is not lost, for if you have one of these little gems hiding in the back of your cupboard, you are in luck! For this tired old piece of machinery can be given new life! So pause a moment and stay your hand before condemning your West Bend "Poppery" or Proctor Silex "Popcorn Pumper" to spend eternity in a landfill.

On the other hand, if you still have those super-long "down to your knees" sweaters, or even worse, parachute pants, please feel free to dispose of them in lieu of the Air Popper. After all, some things from the 80's should be left to pass quietly into oblivion. ;)

Stay tuned.

I know, that was pretty vague. But trust me, your gonna LUV this..... It's Wicked Awesome!

NO FEAR!!
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