Sweet Southern Pursuits: Caramel Peanut Butter & Nutella Popcorn

I've had an incurable sweet craving all day. Usually when this happens it'll go away if I have some water, fruit, or a stick of gum, but nothing would satisfy it today. And, it wasn't even like I wanted just anything sweet--I wanted chocolate. I craved chocolate with an extreme intensity, like no matter what I could possibly do, there was no way it would go away without chocolate. Have you ever had this happen?

I started thinking about what I could make to fix this craving, but I wanted to try something new. I quickly skimmed over our pantry and freezer noticing cereal, Carnation Instant Breakfast, Nutella, and Red Hot candies, but nothing came to mind. Thoughts of possible snack ideas crawled through my mind until I remembered how my college roommate loved to eat popcorn. An idea immediately snapped into my mind: chocolate popcorn.

This doesn't sound incredibly appealing at first thought, but when I consider the AMAZING flavored popcorn some friends sent us from Garrett's Popcorn in Chicago for Christmas, chocolate popcorn doesn't seem so far fetched. I searched through some recipes online to get some ideas of exactly how I would do what I was hoping to create, pulled some jars out of our pantry, and got to work.

I ended up creating a surprisingly, amazingly, chocolatey dessert popcorn that will be making a return appearance in our house in the not so distant future. The recipe I created is below:

Chocolatey Caramel Peanut Butter Popcorn
Ingredients:

1/2 cup unpopped popcorn
1/2 cup peanuts, unsalted
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup Nutella
1 tsp vanilla

Directions:
1. Pop the popcorn into a large bowl.

This is the air popper from my childhood! Lots of popcorn has been made in this over the last 20 years!

2. In a small saucepan, mix sugar, honey, and corn syrup over medium heat. Bring to a boil, and continue cooking for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly. (Don't overcook!)

3. Immediately stir peanut butter, Nutella, and vanilla into saucepan until well blended.
4. Immediately pour over popcorn, add peanuts, and stir to coat.