(Yet.)
Last night we did family popcorn-and-movie night with Seven Psychopaths (which I enjoyed for how self-aware and mostly witty it was, but I’m still not 100% sure I followed the plot) and my sister and I somehow wound up with leftover popcorn.
And how!
(I’m not sure how it happened, either, so don’t ask.)
The thing is– I just made dessert yesterday, and I didn’t want to work too hard on making a second dessert just to use up the popcorn. So I thought ‘pfft, I’ll just make popcorn brittle and call it a day.’ Then the inspiration-fairy hit and I decided to make that brittle even better with the addition of Biscoff.
So. Good.
My plan was foolproof. My prepwork was once again excellent.
I was so prepared!
I put the sugar and corn syrup in a pan with water to start simmering. There were bubbles, like there’s supposed to be.
In the words of Jim Broadbent’s character in Moulin Rouge, everything was going so well.
And then, shortly after that picture was taken, everything fell apart. This is incidentally enough where I stopped taking pictures, since horrible failure is not something I really like documenting.
The first caramel burned. I tried again and got as far as adding the butter and Biscoff, but that just made it seize up and impossible to mix with the popcorn. And by that point I’d been standing over the stove for too long to want to try again, so I gave up (sue me) and just made Biscoff caramel corn.
By which I mean I mixed it up anyway and there are pieces that stuck to some of the popcorn.
Whatever.
It’s tasty. Not at all what I wanted, but it’s tasty. And one of these days, I WILL learn how to make a proper caramel.
That day is just not today.
What are your nastiest technical challenges in the kitchen?
peaches & praline 