Awesome, Awesome Grandpa Apell owned a sizable farm in Illinois that produced maize that won awards. For Christmas, he baked popcorn balls for all of the grandchildren. He stated the secret to his long life was working on the farm and eating maize! This dish is fantastic!
| Prep Time: | 10 mins |
| Cook Time: | 15 mins |
| Total Time: | 25 mins |
| Servings: | 10 |
| Yield: | 10 to 3 – inch round balls |
Ingredients
- 2 cups white sugar
- 1 cup light corn syrup
- ½ cup butter
- ¼ cup water
- salt to taste
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar (Optional)
- 5 quarts popped popcorn
Instructions
- In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the sugar, corn syrup, butter and water. Stir and heat to hard-crack stage or 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Remove from heat, add vanilla or vinegar; mix well.
- Pour slowly over popped popcorn while stirring. Wait 5 minutes and shape into 3 inch round balls.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 458 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 75 g |
| Cholesterol | 24 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 2 g |
| Protein | 2 g |
| Saturated Fat | 7 g |
| Sodium | 317 mg |
| Sugars | 49 g |
| Fat | 19 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
Great recipe
My first time making popcorn balls, and now I understand what “crack” means when making candy. I followed the recipe exactly, and after adding the vanilla (I skipped vinegar), you better hurry to mix the popcorn. The hot caramel sets up very quickly. When done, you will be rewarded. It is like “popcorn brittle” balls. Sweet, chewy and crunchy.
These popcorn balls turned out perfect. This is the same recipe my grandfather taught me when I was about 9yrs old. I lost his recipe and when I saw this I just knew they would come out great.
These turned out great. My kids loved them!
Perfect recipe if you use a candy thermometer and water test for the hard crack
Took me forever to make. No way is this 25 minutes. Hard as a rock, can’t eat them. Complete waste of time and money
My Grandma made these back in the 50’ and till she passed at 93 years old. Best ever popcorn ball and best memories ever
I did recipe as directed, I think there is a typo error with the temperature. I have a candy thermometer and let it go to the 300 hard crack as directed. The mixture is burnt and taste terrible. I would stay with the 250 at hard ball. As I have seen in other popcorn recipes on this site. (When the mixture was at the temp of hard ball it looked great).
MickiBellEngler I saw your review of the popcorn balls. The problem is you didn’t cook the candy long enough. Sugar will become liquid as the temperature rises. Ideally you need a candy thermometer to follow the recipe. If you don’t have a candy or meat thermometer, boil it around 10 minutes and you should be close.
Followed the recipe as printed, except I omitted the vinegar. What a MESS! First, caramel sauce was too hard, (although I stirred constantly with wire whisk and even used 2 different candy thermometers.) I then repeated the caramel sauce and took off heat at 250. Even played with it to put it in and out of microwave oven in order to make it “spreadable” on all the popcorn. Never could get it make into a ball form. Will NOT WASTE my time, effort, energy with resultant frustration with this recipe again. In search of easier and foolproof recipe. Would give it a zero if I could. Never have had such a bad experience/recipe as this one from my favorite recipe site.
Alright but turned out a little sticky and not as flavorful as I was hoping for.
I was looking for the old fashioned popcorn ball recipe from my past, clear,sweet, crunchy & wonderful. This is even better, I think because of the butter, probably without the butter, it would be the same taste. It’s amazing reading reviews how many different ways people like their popcorn balls, whenever I try a new recipe on this site, I try to read the reviews first, to give me some prior insight on others experiences. Thank you for a wonderful recipe & happy holidays.
Just like I remembered…..real popcorn balls
Loved the old fashioned taste . I was forced to tweak this recipe ad i only had 3/4 cup of corn syrup so I added a 1/4 cup of honey and and extra tsp of vinegar . and added still yet another tsp vinegar with tsp vanilla after removing from heat . I love the old fashioned vinegar honey taste . you must pour this mixture in a thin stream only tour popcorn . using ladle helps stirring after every few scoops to thinly coat all the corn. . Some people just mix in and have a hardened mess.
I made this vegan! Replaced butter with vegan butter. Very good. The first time I omitted salt and vinegar. The second time added 3/4 tsp salt and used vinegar. I prefer the second way. I also use half the vanilla. Perfect!
I had a terrible time with this recipe. Cooking it to the hard crack is a disaster. It gets way to hard on the corn and hardened to the bottom of the pan before I could even make the balls. A lot of work to have to throw it all away. I could not find my usual recipe so thought I would try this one big mistake.
These were perfect.. My father always made these at Halloween and Christmas. We always added red and green food coloring at Christmas. I used butter microwave popcorn, it was all I had and three to four bags is perfect. I didn’t have to add salt since was already salted. Thanks for sharing such a tradition of a receipe.
I made about 200 of these popcorn balls to give out to neighbors and friends. The response has been so positive I am now at close to 300 balls. I like them, which is good,as I get to eat the goof ups.
Thumbs up to this recipe. My search for popcorn balls is over- thanks for sharing!
Thanks for this yummy recipe. Big thanks to the reviewer tips as well! I haven’t made popcorn balls in 20 years at least but when my sweet husband asked for them, I knew I had to find a good (and easy) recipe. I turned to Allrecipes – love this site! Good old-fashion simple popcorn balls!
This is the same wonderful recipe my family used when I was a kid…been looking for this for years. So excited it is the exact one. This is a keeper for sure and if you know how to make popcorn balls..it doesn’t get any better than this.