Soft and Chewy Caramel Popcorn

The sugaring season ended Thursday. The buds swelled, the sap turned, and the trees said enough. I pulled the taps, cleaned the spiles, scrubbed the evaporator one last time. The sugarhouse went quiet. It'll stay quiet until next March. The end of sugaring is like the end of a school year — you know it's coming, you're ready for it, and you're still a little sad when it arrives.

Final yield: five and a half gallons. A good year. Not the best, but good. The jars are labeled and shelved. "Bergstrom Maple Syrup, 2018." The handwriting on the labels looks the same as it did twenty years ago. Everything else has changed — Helen retired, the kids grew up, the students graduated, the world went digital — but the handwriting on the syrup labels is the same. Some things hold. Some things should.

I made sugar-on-snow for the last hurrah. Helen and I on the porch, fresh syrup on packed snow, the taffy stretching between our fingers and our teeth and making the same mess it's made every spring since I was a boy. Helen got syrup in her hair. I got it on my shirt. Frost got it on his nose and spent ten minutes trying to lick it off, which was the most entertainment either of us had had since the Historical Society talk.

The blog post was the annual "season's end" piece. I wrote about the last boil, the last jar, the quiet of the sugarhouse after the fire goes out. Three people wrote to say it made them cry. One said, "You make maple season sound like a love story." I hadn't thought of it that way. But she's right. It is. The man and the trees. The fire and the sap. The patience and the sweetness. The annual vow: I'll be back next March. The trees' annual answer: we'll be here.

Mud season begins. The road is already softening, the ruts deepening, the annual humbling of every vehicle that isn't a truck with four-wheel drive and a grudge. I drove to the store Monday and the truck found the rut by the mailbox like an old friend. Or an old enemy. Same thing, in Vermont.

Sarah called to say she found Lucy standing — not walking, but standing, nine months old, holding the edge of the coffee table with the concentration of someone solving a complex engineering problem. Sarah said, "She's going to walk early." I said, "They all walk early. And then they never stop." She laughed. I meant it.

Five and a half gallons. Season done. Sugar on snow. Mud season. Lucy standing. Spring is here. March becomes April. We let it.

Helen and I finished the sugar-on-snow and neither of us was ready for the sweetness to be over — but the fresh syrup was already spoken for in labeled jars, and the snow was turning to mud. Caramel popcorn scratches the same itch: the slow-cooked sugar smell, the sticky pull between your fingers, the particular kind of mess you make and don’t mind. It’s not sugar-on-snow, but on a mud-season evening when the sugarhouse is quiet and Frost is watching the bowl with entirely too much hope, it comes close enough.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 50 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour | Servings: 12

Ingredients

12 cups popped popcorn (from about 1/2 cup unpopped kernels)
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Heat oven to 250°F. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Place popped popcorn in a large, lightly greased bowl, removing any unpopped kernels.
Make the caramel. Combine butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, and salt in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Stir constantly until butter melts and mixture is smooth. Bring to a full boil, then boil for exactly 4 minutes without stirring.
Add baking soda and vanilla. Remove pan from heat and immediately stir in baking soda and vanilla extract. The mixture will foam and lighten in color — that’s what you want. Work quickly.
Coat the popcorn. Pour the hot caramel over the popcorn in a steady stream, folding and stirring with a silicone spatula to coat as evenly as possible. It will be sticky and imperfect; that’s fine.
Bake low and slow. Spread the coated popcorn in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 45 minutes, stirring and redistributing every 15 minutes so the caramel sets evenly and nothing scorches on the edges.
Cool completely. Remove from the oven and spread onto a fresh sheet of parchment or a silicone mat. Let cool undisturbed for at least 20 minutes — the caramel will firm into that signature soft, chewy coating as it cools. Break into clusters and serve.

Nutrition (per serving)

Soft and Chewy Caramel Popcorn — A Last-Hurrah Sweet When the Syrup Runs Out