White Chocolate Peppermint Popcorn

A good friend of mine owned a store that sold specialty popcorn. I loved all the popcorn there! We had some peppermint candies and thought white chocolate peppermint popcorn would be good.

The first thing we did was pulverize the candies. If this didn’t work there was no need to go any farther without rethinking the idea. We got out our  Stick Hand Blender with Chopper Attachments, put the unwrapped candies inside and literally gave it a whirl. Amazingly it worked! The candies turned into a powder. Perfect! Next Christmas I am going to use up my left over candy canes using this method.

Little Chef Dad is the official popcorn popper in the house. We use this old pan (you can tell it has been used a lot!). Coat the bottom of the pan with oil and put in 3 popcorn kernals. When they pop you know the pan is hot enough to pour in the 1/2 cup and put the lid on. Shake it every 15 seconds or so just so the bottom doesn’t burn. When the popping subsides it is done. Pour the popcorn into a large bowl. It is important to sift through the popcorn and take out any unpopped kernals. You wouldn’t want to bite down on one of those, it is painful. I know from experience!

Melt 1 cup of white chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl. Check it every 15 seconds to stir. When it is all melted take it out. You do not want to overcook white chocolate.

Pour the melted white chocolate and peppermint powder in the same bowl as the popcorn and mix quickly. Keep stirring and stirring and stirring. Eventually the chocolate and peppermint powder will be evenly distributed over all the popcorn.

I mentioned to Little Chef Dad the last time I made popcorn that I needed a bowl twice the size of the one I was using. He took that seriously…very seriously. He ordered from amazon two bowls. When the first one arrived I brought the box inside and asked, “What did you order?” He just started to laugh! I opened it and it was the biggest bowl (like this one) I had ever seen! It was 25″ across. He knew that buying it but didn’t get out a tape measure and visually see 25″. A few days later another bowl arrived, even bigger then the first. He thought he was helping out. When he tried returning the biggest bowl, return shipping was almost the same cost of the bowl so we decided to just keep it. Maybe we will bathe our new baby in it or our toddler. It is big enough for both! This is the smaller of the two bowls. He was right though, this bowl is bigger and it was a lot easier for Little Chef C to mix the popcorn in without half of the kernals escaping.

Pour the popcorn out on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or wax paper to dry.  We took our newly made White Chocolate Peppermint Popcorn to a family gathering and it was well received. Popcorn making isn’t as hard as I once thought. It is even easy enough for Little Chefs to make…if Little Chef Dad makes the popcorn!