Did you know Wednesday was National Popcorn Day?
It's true! And to celebrate, I made some popcorn. Rocky road popcorn!
I'd been wanting to make some sort of Moose Munch-Poppycock-esque treat for a while now — popcorn coated with a lighter glaze than your traditional caramel and studded with other yummy treats.
While looking around for a recipe for popcorn glaze, I ran across a post in Yahoo! Answers asking for the same thing. One person responded with a recipe for a glaze made with marshmallows.
I LOVE marshmallows!
So I knew this recipe was going to be a good one. And it didn't take me long for me to realize that a sure-fire way to make marshmallow popcorn even more tasty would be to add MORE marshmallows, plus chocolate and almonds — the classic rocky road combo.
(For guidance on the chocolaty part, I turned to Larissa's post for chocolate-covered caramel corn.)
This recipe isn't difficult at all, but it is a little bit time-consuming — particularly if you pop your corn the old-fashioned way, which is what I did. But when you end up with a huge bowl of crunchy sugar-coated goodness, I think you'll agree it was time well spent.
Recipe: Rocky road popcorn
Adapted from recipes by "Mouse Potato" and foodchannel.com
- ½ cup popping corn, popped
- 1 to 2 cups almonds (depending on how much you like them)
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 stick butter
- ¼ cup light corn syrup
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2½ cups miniature marshmallows, divided
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
- Preheat oven to 250˚F. Spread popped popcorn on a greased baking sheet, and sprinkle with the almonds.
- In a large heavy saucepan over medium heat, combine the sugar, butter, corn syrup and salt, and stir constantly until the mixture begins to boil.
- Stop stirring and let the mixture boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat.
- Add 1½ cups of the marshmallows and stir until melted. Stir in vanilla. Pour marshmallow mixture over popcorn mixture; stir until well coated.
- Bake popcorn and nuts for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Remove popcorn from oven and let cool.
- Put chocolate chips into a large heatproof bowl set over, but not touching, a pot of simmering water, and stir until melted.
- Add a few scoops of popcorn and nuts to the bowl of melted chocolate, and stir until coated. Then add a couple more scoops, and stir some more. Repeat until about half the batch of popcorn is coated in chocolate.
- Pluck the popcorn pieces from the chocolate with tongs and spread them out on a baking sheet lined with wax paper. Sprinkle the remaining 1 cup of marshmallows over the chocolate-coated popcorn, and let cool.
- When the chocolate has hardened, mix the chocolate-marshmallow-coated popcorn with the rest of the candied popcorn in a large bowl for serving. Store in an airtight container.