Popcorn Balls

Faith's Popcorn Balls

This recipe is from a Home-Economic class I took in high school taught by Mrs. Dorothy Jones. It is so good, I would never look for a better recipe. Maybe due to the honey in mixture.

8 cups popped popcorn (see note below)
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup light corn syrup
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) oleo

[Place your popped popcorn in a large bowl for mixing. Set out waxed paper to put the finished popcorn balls on.]

Place all the ingredients except the popcorn in a heavy bottomed 2-quart pot. Cook and stir until the mixture reaches the softball stage. It will start to bubble up about halfway through the cooking. Continue to stir so that it doesn't burn.

Immediately pour over the popped popcorn and stir to coat, scrapping up any syrup from the bottom of the bowl.

Wait until the mixture cools a bit so you don't burn your hands. It will be very hot initially. Butter your hands lightly and shape the popcorn into balls. Set them on wax paper and let them harden.

Wrap in colored cellophane.

Note: I last time I made this, I made two batches of popcorn using 1/2 cup unpopped popcorn for each batch (1 cup total). I had about 22 cups of popped corn total. I used only one batch of the syrup as made above and divided it between the two bowls of popcorn (the popcorn wouldn't all fit in one). The popcorn wasn't totally covered by the syrup, but it had a decent cover. Because I used so much more popcorn than the recipe called for (22 cups as opposed to 8), it was a bit difficult getting the popcorn to stick together in balls. The recipe above that only uses 8 cups of popcorn would be too sweet for me, although I loved these when we first made them in class.

Next time I will try making it with 3/4 cup popcorn kernels, which I should be able to pop in one batch and will give me about 15 cups popped. I got 18 large popcorn balls from the 22 cups of popcorn.