Home › Christmas Dinners › Popcorn Fudge
Popcorn Fudge
2 1/2 cups freshly popped corn, ground 2 cups granulated sugar 1/2 cup corn syrup 1/2 cup water 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 egg whites, beaten stiff Put the popped corn through a meat grinder. Boil the sugar, syrup, water and salt until a little past the soft ball stage. Remove from fire and pour upon stiffly beaten egg whites. Beat until smooth. With this quantity of syrup, use 2 1/2 cups of ground popped corn; pour into buttered pan and when partly cold, mark into squares.
This is divinity candy with ground popcorn folded through it, and like all divinity it lives or dies on the syrup temperature and the weather.
- "A little past the soft ball stage"Soft ball is 235-240F; a little past it means about 245-250F on a candy thermometer. Below that the fudge never sets and stays a sticky paste; much above 255F it turns crumbly before you can spread it.
- Grinding the popcornA food processor stands in for the meat grinder. Pulse in short bursts to a coarse crumb rather than a powder, and discard unpopped kernels and hard hulls first.
- Pour hot, beat fastAdd the syrup to the whites in a thin steady stream with the mixer running, not all at once, or the whites scramble in ribbons. A stand mixer does in three or four minutes what a hand beater will fight you for.
- Knowing when to stop beatingThe mixture is ready when it loses its gloss and a dropped spoonful holds its shape instead of flattening. Stir the popcorn in at that moment and get it into the pan immediately; it stiffens within a minute or two.
- Pan and yieldThe recipe says only 'buttered pan'; an 8-inch square one suits this quantity. Cut small, it should give roughly three dozen squares.
- HumidityDivinity will not set on a damp day. Sugar syrups draw moisture from the air, and a humid kitchen leaves you with candy that stays tacky no matter how long it sits.
- Egg whitesThe hot syrup heats the whites considerably but does not reliably pasteurize them. If you are serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg, use pasteurized whites, which whip to a stiff peak with a little more patience.
- StorageKeep the squares in an airtight tin between sheets of waxed paper. The popcorn softens as it absorbs sugar and moisture, so the texture is best within two or three days.
Divinity - boiled sugar syrup beaten into egg whites - spread through American home candy-making in the early twentieth century, a period when commercial corn syrup was becoming cheap and widely sold; the glucose in it discourages the sugar from crystallizing coarsely. Adding ground popcorn belongs to the same thrift-minded impulse behind popcorn balls and cracker jack: popcorn was among the cheapest bulk foods in an American pantry, and putting it through the meat grinder turned it into something closer to a nut meal, standing in for the pecans or walnuts many divinity recipes call for.