There's Baking Soda In Caramel

Lot's of cooking happened yesterday! First, it was my turn to cook Sunday dinner for the apartment which meant finding a vegetarian recipe because my other roommate is a vegetarian. After a long time on google, I finally decided on breakfast burritos! So, I scrambled eggs, cooked sausage, heated up queso and toritillas, and got some shredded cheese then served it buffet style. This way me and Hillary could get sausage, but Abby didn't have to touch it!

Next, I finally made the caramel popcorn that I've been wanting to make. I learned to always get out the ingredients needed for a recipe before starting it (I'll tell you why in a few minutes). To start out you pop corn in a pan by pouring enough vegetable oil to line the bottom of it then enough kernels to line the bottom and heat on medium-high heat covered until they pop! Let me say the popping corn was one of the funnest things I've ever watched. I'm making my popcorn like this from now on!

 Then fill 2 shallow pans with the popcorn. I started out with them on cookie sheets but remembered later that you have to stir the popcorn. So, I moved them to some pyrex pans.

Now comes the fun part: making the caramel. First you melt 2 sticks of butter in a pan. I recommend using a bigger one than I did because I almost had a few overflows. Add brown sugar and salt. Stir continuoulsy while boiling for 5 minutes. Then add baking soda and vanilla gradually. Here's the problem. We reached this point, and I went to get the baking soda to find that I only had baking powder... Not the same thing. Keep in mind that I have 5 minutes of needing to continuously stir the caramel while I solve this dilemma. First we went and knocked on our neighbors doors to ask to borrow some... no answer. Then we thought we found a recipe that didn't use baking soda. Nope it still used it; just didn't list it in the ingredient list. So I had to run to the ghetto HEB while Hills stirred for me. Thank goodness there was no line and baking soda only costs 40 cents.

 After adding the baking soda (not powder) and vanilla, you pour the caramel mix over the popcorn then bake at 250 for an hour and stir every 15 minutes.

While the 1 hour wait was horribly long, we decided it was worth it! The popcorn is AMAZINGGG. I highly recommend it if you're bored, and need a long project to do.