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Popcorn Balls
Make an old-fashioned molasses candy, and just before removing from the fire, stir in enough popcorn to thicken it. Take mixture out by spoonful and roll, as soon as it can be handled, into balls, then roll these over and over in kernels of popcorn until no more will adhere to balls.
The recipe assumes you already know how to make old-fashioned molasses candy, which is the whole difficulty. Everything else is speed and protected hands.
- The molasses candyA workable base is 1 cup molasses, 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons butter and a tablespoon of water, boiled without stirring once the sugar has dissolved. Old "molasses candy" recipes in books of this period rarely give a temperature because the cook judged by the cold-water test.
- The stage that mattersCook to hard-ball, about 250-265F on a candy thermometer. Below that the balls sag and weep; cooked much beyond that the syrup sets progressively harder and less pliable, and coats the corn less willingly.
- Work fast, but not too fastMolasses syrup at 260F will blister skin instantly. Let the mass sit one to two minutes off the heat, then butter your hands heavily or wear clean cotton gloves under disposable ones. The window between too hot to touch and too stiff to shape is under five minutes.
- How much popcorn"Enough to thicken it" is roughly 3 to 4 quarts of popped corn for the quantity of syrup above, plus another quart or two loose for the outer rolling. Pop it in advance and keep it warm in a low oven, around 200F, so it does not chill the syrup on contact.
- Sort the corn firstPick out unpopped kernels and half-popped hulls before mixing. They are a common cause of a cracked tooth in a popcorn ball, and they will not be visible once everything is coated.
- Add a pinch of soda, optionalA quarter teaspoon of baking soda stirred in off the heat lightens the candy slightly and makes it less tooth-gluing. Some nineteenth-century molasses candy recipes call for a similar addition under the older name saleratus.
- Yield and keepingExpect about a dozen balls of tennis-ball size. Wrap each in waxed paper or cellophane as soon as it is cool and firm; unwrapped, they turn sticky within a day, and molasses draws moisture faster than plain sugar syrup.
Popcorn balls belong to a nineteenth-century American family of cheap holiday confections built on molasses, which was far less expensive than refined sugar for most of that century and gave candy its characteristic dark, faintly bitter edge. They were made for Christmas trees and Hallowe'en alike, hung by threads or piled on a dish. The two-stage method here, binding the corn in syrup and then rolling the finished ball in more dry corn, hides the sticky surface and makes a ball that can be handed round a parlour without gluing itself to the recipient.