Churro Popcorn
I spent a lot of my childhood growing up in Mexico, and churros were my all time favourite dessert! I miss them, I guess I more miss being able to get freshly made churros without paying an arm and a leg for them. I’m not yet at this place where I feel like I could make my own churros, frying things feels a little too dangerous for me right now. Luckily this churro popcorn recipe by Homemade Hooplah was here to save the day.
This recipe has three parts to it. 1) the popcorn 2) the sauce and 3) the sugar coating.
What you’ll need:
- Popcorn:
the original recipe says 1/3 cup popcorn kernels. My popcorn machine is old and the popping is not consistent so this measurement didn’t help me. I just used one slightly large mixing bowl filled with popped popcorn. - Sauce:
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup sugar
3 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp corn syrup
1/4 tbsp vanilla extract - Sugar Coating:
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Mix the powdered sugar, sugar, and cinnamon for the sugar coating by whisking it all together. For real do this first so you don’t have a stress-filled mad rush assembly process. This is going to be that sugary topping on your churro popcorn.
Next pop your popcorn! Try and take out all the unpopped kernels. Like I said before my popcorn machine is super old. So this step took the longest.
After what feels like 5 years and your popcorn is popped start in on the sauce. Add the butter, sugar, cinnamon, corn syrup, and vanilla into a large pot over medium heat. Whisk continually until everything has melted together and the sugar has dissolved. A good way to tell is to run your whisk along the bottom of the pan and spread the mixture out. It’s easier to see how incorporated everything is.
Once the sauce is all mixed up and fully melted together slowly drizzle the sauce over the popcorn a small amount at a time then toss the popcorn. My bowl was super full so I used a wooden spoon to mix it together and this worked relatively well. Spilt enough kernels that I got a churro popcorn snack but not so many that the overall quantity was effected.
In parts add the sugar coating to complete the churro popcorn! This step can get quite messy but is necessary.
Once you’ve got that churro popcorn ready just go ahead and stuff your face! The whole house smells like cinnamon goodness and you deserve it.
This recipe seemed to go so smoothly right? JOKES it did not. I first tried after work one night and was riding high from my caramel corn success. Came down from that cloud real quickly. The first mistake I doubled the sauce recipe and didn’t account for my popcorn machine underperforming. This resulted in so much sauce that the popcorn just got drenched and soggy. Smartie that I am figured I could just put it in the oven and crisp it back up as you do with the caramel corn. Never mind that there are none of the ingredients that cause this reaction. So the butter just melted and made it so much soggier. Should have stopped immediately after realizing this but I was on this ride and was going to see it to the end. It all ended up somehow burnt and soggy at the same time.
But dang it all I want churro popcorn and I will have churro popcorn. Got up the next morning and tried again. You do not need to double this sauce recipe! Add enough sauce to lightly coat the popcorn not drench it. Also, make up for an ancient popcorn machine and make sure you have a full bowl ready to go before you even start making the sauce. But most importantly DON’T PUT THIS IN THE OVEN. It makes no sense I’m not even sure why I thought it would work. Good luck, and enjoy this delicious churro popcorn!
-Hannah
