Frugal Fall Food and Fun – Popcorn Balls

If you’re just joining me, this is my Frugal Fall Week.  I’m sharing frugal fall fun and food from my childhood with my kids and wanted to pass it on to you.  If you missed our Family Taffy Pull, you can see it all here.
Today’s yummy thing we did was to make Popcorn Balls.  My mom used to make them every Halloween and we would pass them out to the neighbors.  They are still just a yummy as they were 30 some years ago (oh dear…did I really just say that out loud!!??)

This is how we made them:
Ingredients:
2 quarts popped popcorn
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup dark corn syrup
1/4 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract


Directions:
Place popcorn in a large bowl; set aside.

In a heavy saucepan, combine brown sugar, water, corn syrup, butter and salt.  Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly.  Continue cooking, without stirring, until 270 degrees F.

Remove from heat; stir in vanilla.  pour over popcorn; stir until evenly coated.  When cool enough to handle, quickly shape into balls.

As you can see there are some lighter and some darker popcorn balls.  We tried some with brown sugar and some without.  The ones with the brown sugar were the best.

These are really good.  You do have to do some extra teeth brushing though when your done!!