Missing your favorite EPCOT snacks until your next visit to the park? SAMESIES!
Caramel goodness!
We especially miss one of our favorite snack spots — Karamell-Küche — with all its AMAZING caramel treats. Its name literally means “caramel kitchen,” so they know their stuff! If you’ve never wandered over to the sweet shop in the Germany Pavilion, Karamell-Küche is home to fudge, brownies, cookies, apples, and basically ANY other treat you can imagine, covered with lots and lots of Werther’s Original Caramel.
If you can’t visit Karamell-Küche to get some of their famous treats right now, you can make your own version of one of its most popular snacks right in your kitchen! So, get ready to make movie night even better with this version of the Werther’s Caramel Corn Recipe!
Making Caramel Corn
We tore through a lot of caramel corn recipes on the internet but none seemed to add up to that delightful treat we know and love. Most used baking soda, which we don’t recall ever seeing in the open kitchen while the caramel corn was prepared, so we came up with our own recipe!
Note: We stand corrected! An authority on the subject reached out to correct us that the real recipe DOES, in fact, contain baking soda. They would say no more than that (so don’t expect the ACTUAL recipe to be revealed!), so all of our digging, it seems, was in vain. 🙁 BUT we can tell you this yields a delightful tasting caramel corn quite similar in taste and texture to Karamell-Küche’s variety we were still more than happy with.
Baking soda reacts with the caramel when added after it’s cooked, causing it to foam up slightly; this allows the caramel to coat the corn more easily. This recipe provides ample caramel to cover a standard batch of popcorn so it should still yield good results! We hope you like it!
Ingredients
- ¼ cup of coconut oil
- ½ cup of popcorn kernels
Popcorn Ingredients
- 1 ½ sticks of butter
- 2 cups of sugar
- 1 can of evaporated milk
- 1 tsp of kosher salt (2 tsp if using unsalted butter)
- 1 cup of light corn syrup (All our store had in stock was dark — that works too if that’s all you can find!)
Caramel Ingredients
Recipe
Popcorn:
Note, we’re making our own popcorn but by all means, grab a bag of your fav microwave popcorn and pop it up instead!
1. Set your stove on medium to high heat. Melt the coconut oil in a deep pot with a lid.
Melted Coconut Oil and Kernels
2. Once melted, add 3 kernels of popcorn to the pot. Wait for them to all pop! After they do, scoop them out and dump the rest of your kernels inside the pot.
Popcorn Kernels
3. Shake the pot quick to evenly disperse the kernels. Cover the pot and immediately take it off the heat.
Popcorn Kernels
4. Wait 30 seconds before putting the pot back on the heat. Once the kernels start popping vigorously, begin shaking the pot until the popping slows or stops.
Popcorn Kernels Popping!
5. Immediately dump your popcorn into a bowl so it doesn’t burn!
Anybody Else Hungry Now??
Caramel:
6. Wipe out your popcorn pot. Add 1 stick of butter, sugar, evaporated milk, kosher salt, and corn syrup. Now’s a good time to slip a candy thermometer on your pot.
Caramel Ingredients
Make sure to stir it well until you start getting that GORGEOUS caramel color!
Evaporated Milk
7. Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. Be patient!! This will take some time. It will seem like your thermometer isn’t budging then it will take off after a few minutes!
Bubbling Caramel
8. Stir continually until the temperature reaches “hard ball” or 266 degrees F on the candy thermometer. Make sure to watch the thermometer very closely as you wait, stirring the entire time! Accuracy is key when making candy! Note: we don’t recommend doing this without a candy thermometer. The difference in a few degrees could mean you’re left with sticky syrup or rock hard candy, so eyeballing it is NOT recommended!
Almost Ready!
9. When it hits 266 degrees, turn off the heat and move the pan off the hot stove.
Lookin’ Good!
10. Stir in the extra ½ stick of butter.
Stirring in the Butter
11. As soon as it melts, dump the popcorn into the pot…
Add Your Popcorn
…and stir until it’s coated. You’ll want to work pretty quickly since the caramel will start setting up as it cools.
We’re SO Close to Finishing!
12. Pour the popcorn onto a sheet pan…
Placing the Popcorn onto a Sheet Tray
…and spread it as evenly as you can manage. It will start to set by this point.
Doesn’t That Look AMAZING?
Let it cool completely before breaking it into smaller bits to eat!
Caramel Popcorn!
And, there you have it!! You’ve got your own Caramel Corn just like in EPCOT (we haven’t been this excited about popcorn since we tried our Cheesy Chocolate Caramel Popcorn hack!).
Your Own Werther’s Caramel Corn
While you’re baking up a storm in your kitchen, you can also make Nudel Gratin and giant Soft Pretzels from the Germany Pavilion. Oooor you can even try your hand at a few Flower and Garden Festival recipes! Whatever you pick, we bet your kitchen will smell just as great as Karamell-Küche (ours sure did!) 😉 Guten Appetit, friends!!
Looking for more Disney recipes? We’ve got all the park eats and treats you need here!
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Do you know why they call it hard ball or soft ball stage in making candy? It is what happens when you drop a small amount in cold water. For fudge and softer candy, you go for soft ball. You get a cup of cold water, drop a small bit of the cooked fudge into the water. If it runs out and doesn’t gather into a ball, it’s not done yet. If it forms a soft ball, it’s ready. You may need to push it into the soft ball with your finger. If it doesn’t hold the ball shape, it needs more cooking. If it forms a hard ball, you’ve cooked it too long and might not be salvageable. Harder candy needs to be hard ball stage. If the small bit you dripped into the cold water doesn’t harden in the water, it needs more time.
My mom never had a candy thermometer and taught me how make candy and how to bake. In 70 years, I’ve used a candy thermometer one time and it was a pain to use. Plus you get to taste a tiny bit while you are cooking it.
Because there is nothing else to do these days, I had all the ingredients on hand and I have never heard of caramel made with evaporated milk, I decided to give this recipe a try. I have made a lot of caramel both sauces and candies using cream. I have also seen it made with sweetened condensed milk so this is new to me. I was concerned that the amount of liquid and ingredients compared to 1/2 cup corn kernels also seemed off. I followed the directions exactly as written. It did take forever for the thermometer to reach 266 degrees! I ended up with about double the amount of caramel than needed and although it reached the right temp it wasn’t a soft boil caramel. Unfortunately this was a fail for me. Now that I am craving it, I am going to order a big bag of Werthers caramel and try to copy the recipe online that seems really similar to the way I have seen them make it in Epcot. Thank you for the fun diversion tho.
I’ve made caramel corn many times, but this was the first time using this recipe. It’s pretty simple recipe. NOTE: Make sure you pick out the unpopped kernels before dumping into your caramel. I got a little savage dumping mine and the kernels went in also…lol. You definitely have to be patient and or adjust your heat to get to 266 the Soft Crackle stage of candy. I got impatient and didn’t wait. The outcome was still delicious but very chewy. I did add 1/2 tsp of baking soda and it can probably use at least a teaspoon of vanilla. But still taste delicious.
I was able to fix the chewiness of caramel by dumping the popcorn a sprayed cooking baking dish or baking pan that’s lipped. Set the over at 250. Once set I put the pan into and turn corn every 15 minutes for and hour (that’s 4 turns.) Once done Layout on foil that’s sprayed and spreed that’s delicious caramel corn out. Using too paddle to spread it before it cools. Voila!
A lot of work!! Definitely not going to attempt this, even though I love caramel popcorn. Easier to buy!
BE VERY CAREFUL HERE. If you are buying just any supermarket popcorn off the shelf, you’re buying butterfly popcorn. This shape can hold on to unpopped kernels easily and get locked in from the caramel. You definitely don’t want to bite down on an unpopped kernel. 🙂
Instead, consider buying “mushroom” popcorn which can be readily found online. This ship is more ball like and kernels are more easily sifted out.
Bottom line, no matter what shape popcorn you use, ALWAYS sift your kernels being careful to inspect for and remove unpopped kernels. Your teeth will thank you.
In most caramel corn recipes it’s 1 tsp of baking soda. You add it to the caramel after it’s reached the correct temperature. Pull it off the burner, add the baking soda, it will bubble up, so be careful, and stir it in quickly.
You can buy The Werther’s Caramel popcorn at the store. It is delicious.