Christmas Baking

More below about adapting Christmas recipes to make them with better ingredients, but first…

Every so often someone will ask about a good caramel corn recipe. While I don’t recommend that you make it often, if you’re going to make it, here’s a little bit better version. Most recipes you see are made with corn syrup and some say to use the microwave, or even worse, they call for microwave popcorn, ick. That stuff is full of chemicals. You don’t want that in your body or your kid’s bodies!

It’s sad but true, our teen has a sweet tooth like his Mom, and when he’s motivated, he can do anything. Well, one day he was motivated to make some caramel corn, so he looked online and only saw recipes with corn syrup, and he knew we don’t have that here. “What if I used maple syrup instead, Mom?” I told him to give it a shot. I wanted to use his name here, and call it his recipe, but he wasn’t about to let me do that.

photo by hellosputnik

Garrett’s caramel corn in Chicago is dreamy, but not as dreamy as this recipe. Oprah said Garrett’s was her favorite, but she hasn’t tried this.

It’s easy, too. The only pain is the dishes you dirty in the process.

Here’s my advice:

Don’t make it unless you’re with a big group of people who can devour it with you, and then you won’t have to worry about eating it all yourself in one sitting. Most of these ingredients are actually healthy for you, with ONE big fat exception: that nasty yummy rotten delicious brown sugar.

BETTER THAN GARRETT’S CARAMEL CORN

Preheat oven to 300*

Make 1 batch of Kelly’s popcorn, but don’t add butter or salt on top when it’s done.
Toss in 1/2 c. crispy nuts, if desired
Put 1/3 c. butter, 1/2 c. brown sugar and 1/4 c. real maple syrup in a small saucepan. Add a pinch of sea salt.
Heat the mixture on medium high. Be sure to keep stirring. Bring to a boil and allow it to boil for 2 minutes, without letting it burn!
Pour over the popcorn. Using a large wooden spoon, gently stir the popcorn until all of the pieces are coated.
Spread the popcorn onto a buttered cookie sheet.
Bake for about 15 minutes.
Store leftovers in an airtight container.
Enjoy! UPDATE: try this recipe that is just as good but MUCH easier: Kettle Corn!

A reader, Heather, emailed recently asking about adapting recipes for Christmas treats and making them a little better. (Sugar is bad, anyway you slice it, but ohhhhh how I love it.) I suggested she do what we did above, and replace any corn syrup in recipes with real maple syrup. Warning: I’ve only tried it with a couple recipes, so tread carefully.

photo by laurenatclemson

She also said she loves Peppermint Bark. After a quick google search, the recipe I saw only had 2 ingredients: white chocolate and candy canes. At my homemade hot cocoa post, A Grateful Mom said in the comments, ” I have purchased no artificial flavors, artificial colors or preservative candy canes in my local organic/natural foods store.” Another friend has found them at the dollar store around us without corn syrup, and with cane sugar instead. A small improvement anyway. For the white chocolate, I’ve checked these out well at the store (for a certain friend who loves me to make her treats with it), and most white chocolate chips have trans fats. However, the Ghirardelli white chocolate ingredient label, chips or bars, are much better.

Another ingredient I see in a lot of sweets recipes is “sweetened condensed milk” – I don’t even know what that is. So if I find a recipe with that in it, I’ll just keep looking and find a similar one without it. (I did this when looking for a pumpkin dessert to take to Thanksgiving, and didn’t have trouble finding an alternative.)

Have you adapted recipes to use better ingredients? Let us know what you did! Or if you have a favorite Christmas treat recipe that you’re wondering how to adapt, comment and all of us can try to help.