When I was a child, my mother used to make these peanut butter popcorn balls for Halloween and it was still acceptable to distribute handmade sweets. Now I prepare it as a chewy, moist fall snack. If you like, you can roll it into balls or serve it as loose caramel corn.
| Prep Time: | 20 mins |
| Cook Time: | 5 mins |
| Additional Time: | 30 mins |
| Total Time: | 55 mins |
| Servings: | 16 |
| Yield: | 16 balls |
Ingredients
- 1 cup brown sugar
- ⅔ cup white corn syrup
- ¼ cup butter
- 1 cup peanut butter
- 20 cups popped popcorn
Instructions
- Combine brown sugar, corn syrup, and butter in a large saucepan over medium heat; cook and stir until mixture comes to a rolling boil. Remove from the heat, add peanut butter, and stir until smooth.
- Place popcorn into a large bowl. Pour peanut butter mixture over top and toss until evenly coated. Use buttered hands to form mixture into about 16 balls. Arrange balls on a waxed paper-lined baking sheet and let set for at least 30 minutes.
- This will set up quickly, so if it gets too cool to form into balls, microwave for 15 to 30 seconds. Only do this once, or it will burn.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 249 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 35 g |
| Cholesterol | 8 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 3 g |
| Protein | 5 g |
| Saturated Fat | 4 g |
| Sodium | 107 mg |
| Sugars | 19 g |
| Fat | 11 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
It is pretty sweet, but good. I’m not sure if it would work to decrease the sugar, but it would be worth trying for me.
Made 1/2 recipe to try them out. They turned out great!
Oh my gosh. Easy, chewy, gooey…what’s not to love. This is my new go-to popcorn ball recipe! I
Made Oct 26, 2020 9/10 Messed up but turned out good. 20 cups of popcorn. Half the recipe. Had added the peanut butter in with sugar and cooked together, brought to a boil, stirring continuously.
Awesome popcorn if you like peanut butter . Just made it about an hour ago and can’t stop eating it. You can’t go wrong with this recipe
This is a great base recipe and a lot of variations can be done. I added 1.5 tsps of cinnamon and pinch of ground cloves to the sauce, and it tasted excellent. I also melted 1/2 bag pf chocolate chips with 1.5 Tbs coconut oil (you can also use shortening) and mixed that in, and 1/2 bag of marshmallows. You could add M&M’s, too…whatever you like. Lovely, easy recipe. Thanks!
great taste and consistency to the mixture. huge favorite snack for me already. simple and quick to make as well.
It was deliciousness and slightly gooy but not to much, I added a bit if vanilla and I loved how sweet it was. For me the recipe made 23 large balls I loved it.
I drizzled chocolate over the tops – too messy to eat when choc flakes off, next time I will add mini-chocolate chips into the mix instead. Also, I recommend smaller, even bite-sized balls for easier munching! 😀 —> Take two: the caramel is too hot for mini chocolate chips, next time I will try mini M&M’s! mmMmmMmmm!
These are so good and very easy! My boyfriend ate most of them and I had to make another batch! I used 1/2 cup of popping corn, the peanut butter mixture as stated, and ended up with 20 popcorn balls.
Common ingredients, I like that
I used half peanut butter…and added a little bit of salt. Really strong p.butter! Easy to make.
They aster rest, but I couldn’t get the popcorn to stick together in balls.
Nothing hits the spot at the end of long day when kids are sleeping and hubby is stuck at work late! Super quick and easy whip up, and snuggle up with a blankey and guilty pleasure television! I may be guilty of eating a whole batch alone but shhhh
Yep, totally addictive. A half cup of unpopped pop corn makes ten cups of popcorn, so I just cut everything in half. It was plenty. I didn’t have light corn syrup so I used dark. It gave it the color of Cracker Jacks. We didn’t bother to form popcorn balls — just ate it from the bowl. We split it up and added chocolate to half which was mandatory for the chocoholics in the family. It was terrific both ways.
This was my first time making popcorn balls. They were SUPER easy, came together fast and taste amazing.
This was a very delicious recipe. I followed the recipe to the T., now it tasted AMAZING I could not get the popcorn to stick into balls so I just added m&ms and pretzels and made a peanut butter popcorn/trail mix and bagged it up!!!! Everyone loved it!!!
This was so easy! I dipped in chocolate, for a little extra-decadence. Only thing is, they go stale quickly. Eat fresh!
Easy and fast to make with a nice, softer tooth bite than some popcorn balls. Not sure if I miss-measured the popcorn or made the popcorn balls larger but I did not get 16. The popcorn was well coated and held together nicely. This will become a regular Halloween treat. Thanks for sharing.
These need to come with a WARNING! Do not make in presence of husband, or children of any age. Do not make if you’re even the slightest bit hungry and come to think of it do not make if you like any of the ingredients. Why? They will be gone in the blink of an eye! These are delectable! I was happy to realize that if you’re going to follow directions and make 16 balls, then they are a good size. That means less time involved in prep which makes this treat even better in my opinion. I would love to try with drizzled chocolate as suggested but I don’t want to mess with the perfection that these already are! I’ll be making these again this week for a special trick or treat for our close neighbour kids. Thanks Lilcat for sharing your childhood treat recipe!
I am the submitter for this recipe. Shorecook considered drizzling chocolate over these. I recommend doing it! I have made this as loose popcorn(like carmel corn), drizzled melted chocolate on it, put in tins and gave as Christmas gifts. People loved it.