Take Your Baking To Work Days: Part I

In an effort to make more food at home and spend less money, I've baked a lot of biscotti this month. It saves me frequent visits to our building's coffee shop for snacks -- the only thing I really miss is the little walk to ReBoot and Sofia's enthusiastic social commentary. ;)

I have yet to find a great recipe, so please send me one if you have a favorite! I've tried it with and without butter (I guess no butter is more traditional?), and with almonds, chocolate, walnuts, whole wheat ... In each attempt, either the texture is off or the flavor lacks the right balance of sweetness. Fortunately, even least perfect attempts were still edible. I'll post again if when (if?) I find the right recipe.

Caramel Corn

If I trust anyone to turn a fairly healthy food into a sugary, buttery bowl of snacktime happiness, it's Paula Deen. For our Oscar party, I followed her simple instructions for Caramel Corn. (Can't you just hear Savannah grandma drawl wooing you with care-a-mel?)

This takes about 5 minutes of work (10 if you include the stirring later), plus very little skill beyond not burning your fingers on hot sugar. The baking soda makes the caramel puff up and become more mixable. One very important tip: filter out all unpopped kernels before mixing the popcorn and hot caramel, or you'll find them later glued unpleasantly into the popcorn.

Paula Deen's Caramel Corn

Ingredients

• 1 C butter
• 2 C packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 C light corn syrup
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 8 quarts popped corn

Directions

Melt first 4 ingredients in a saucepan over medium. Boil 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in baking soda.

Pour hot caramel over popcorn. Stir to coat -- you'll stir more as it bakes, so it doesn't need to be 100% perfect.

Bake in large roasting pan (something with sides at lest a few inches high) at 200 degrees for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Cool thoroughly before eating.

Popcorn secrets and lies

"Popcorn's Dark Secret" said the headline. 

Dark secret?! I thought. What have they been hiding? Child labor on popcorn farms? Popcorn as a cover for drug cartels?

Apparently the dark secret is that a tub of butter-laden, over-salted movie theater popcorn is full of fat and sodium. Um, not exactly a secret -- but the fact that some theaters advertised their popcorns as significantly fewer calories is a pretty dastardly lie.

My own popcorn secret is not so dark. I've used olive oil instead of butter for the past couple years, sprayed straight from my Crate and Barrel oil mister. It started as a health effort, but it's honestly just way easier than melting butter. You can evenly cover a big bowl with a tablespoons or two of oil without greasing up any extra dishes. It tastes just as good (IMO, and Brian doesn't seem to mind). And while it's not exactly a health food, it's definitely an improvement: the calories in olive oil are about the same as in butter, but the saturated fat is about one-fourth. 

If you want to avoid the sodium, try substituting another flavor for at least part of your salt. Pepper is easy (though, cartoonishly, it makes me sneeze). A ground spice like mustard, coriander, or nutmeg could be interesting. Some herbs, like dill, work well too, but they must be light enough to stick to the popped corn when you sprinkle it over. 

I think this is plenty of motivation for us to all have our own popcorn secrets.