Candy Cane Popcorn
If you ask us our favorite thing about the holidays, we could never choose. But what we can do is give you a long list of the things we love and candy canes would absolutely be on it. Something about seeing the first ones in the store, early in the season, always puts a smile on our face and we know we’ll be buying so many of them. Pretty much every shopping trip results in a box of candy canes coming home with us. We leave them in a jar for everyone to help themselves but also use them for decorations, tree ornaments, cookies, candy bark, gifts and, of course, candy cane popcorn!
Oh, you know we had to make a batch of that. OK, who are we kidding. We have made many, many batches of that. Because in addition to not being able to keep it around without it being devoured by everybody as fast as we can make it, we also make extra to give as gifts.
Some candy and flavored popcorn recipes require some baking to get the coating to adhere to the popcorn. But this recipe only needs a little time for the chocolate to set. It will harden up and be crispy and crunchy and salty and sweet. And if that doesn’t describe the perfect snack then we don’t know what does.
You can certainly use those round striped candies instead of the canes. And there’s a strong argument to be made that unwrapping a candy cane is an annoying bit of work. But we’re obsessed with that cane shape so it’s candy canes for us. These days you can find them in different colors and different flavors and any of them would work fine for this recipe. But we’re suckers for the classic red and white stripe and the classic sweet peppermint flavor. We did add a touch of green, though, from some holiday sprinkles.
The batches that we managed to keep from being eaten immediately were placed in jars, wrapped in ribbon and decorated with a candy cane. The perfect little holiday gift.
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