Recipe by Jodie Smith

Christmas Popcorn Snack Mix

Name: Christmas Popcorn Snack Mix
Prep time: 10 min
Yield: 8

Serves8 people

Prep10 min

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Kangaroo Island Honey Popcorn 80g

$7.95

Hand-packed and dispatched from our Corio, Victoria warehouse, with free delivery Australia-wide on orders over $100.

This is an assembly, not a caramel recipe. Two boxes of honey coated popcorn, a pack of truffle nuts, a handful of chocolate pretzels and a giant milk chocolate speckle snapped into shards, tossed together in a wide bowl. Ten minutes, no saucepan, and it fills a bowl for eight.

Ingredients

Serves 8 as a snack. Prep 10 minutes, no cooking. Everything in the table below is on our shelves except the orange and the salt.

The base
1 box, 80g	Kangaroo Island Honey Popcorn
1 box, 80g	TRCC B Company Honey Popcorn
The savoury half
1 pack, 100g	Mr Filbert's Italian Black Truffle Mixed Nuts
80g	VPC Milk Chocolate Pretzels, about half the box
The chocolate
1, 40g	Chocolatier Pure Delight Milk Chocolate Speckle, snapped into shards
To finish
1	orange, the finely grated zest only
Large pinch	flaky sea salt
Beside the bowl, not in it
1 jar, 170g	VPC Confectionery Jar, Golf, for the people who want something to suck on

Why bought popcorn holds up better than home made here

A mix sits out for a couple of hours, and that is exactly when home made caramel popcorn goes chewy. Both boxes in this recipe are heavily coated rather than lightly seasoned: the ingredient list on the TRCC box runs raw sugar, glucose syrup, popped corn at 19 per cent, Australian honey at 9 per cent, butter, sunflower oil, soy lecithin and salt. Four fifths of that box by weight is the coating. It is what makes the corn a cluster instead of a flake, and clusters keep their crunch in a bowl. Both sit with the rest of our gourmet popcorn.

The two boxes are not the same sweet

The Kangaroo Island box is honey coated popcorn made with Ligurian honey from the island, and it reads as honey first. The TRCC B Company box states 100 per cent Australian honey on the front and lists butter in the coating alongside it, so it lands closer to butterscotch. Using both is the point: one box of anything tastes like one box of anything, and the second flavour is what stops people stopping. The rest of the island range sits on the Kangaroo Island Produce Company page.

Allergens. This mix contains tree nuts and peanuts. The Mr Filbert's pack lists roasted mixed nuts at 96 per cent, made up of peanuts, cashews and almonds. The TRCC popcorn declares milk and soy. The Chocolatier speckle declares milk, soy and egg, and says it may contain peanut, almond, hazelnut, wheat and gluten. We do not publish an allergen statement for the Kangaroo Island popcorn or the chocolate pretzels, so read those two packs yourself or call us on 1300 936 406 before you serve this to anyone with an allergy.

Method

Choose a wide, shallow bowl rather than a deep one. A deep bowl crushes the popcorn under its own weight and everybody digs to the bottom for the chocolate.
Tip both boxes of popcorn in and break any clusters bigger than a walnut apart with your fingers.
Snap the giant speckle into rough 2cm shards. Press down on it in its wrapper with the heel of your hand and it breaks cleanly along the chocolate rather than shedding the hundreds and thousands.
Add the nuts and the pretzels.
Grate the orange zest straight over the bowl so the oil lands on the popcorn rather than on a chopping board.
Scatter the salt from a height, so it spreads instead of landing in one place.
Add the chocolate shards last and fold everything twice with your hands, no more. Every extra toss knocks coating off the popcorn and sends it to the bottom as dust.
Serve within two hours, and keep the bowl out of the sun.

The ratio, and how to scale it

A little more of everything else than popcorn, by weight. That is 160g of popcorn against roughly 220g of nuts, pretzels and chocolate for eight people, which works out at about 48g a head. Double the whole thing for a party of twenty and mix it in two batches in the same bowl rather than one, because a single deep pile compacts and the chocolate ends up buried.

If you are taking it somewhere, carry the parts separately and combine on arrival. That is also the argument in our Christmas road trip snacks piece, and it is the difference between a snack mix and a bag of crumbs.

Common questions

How far ahead can I make a popcorn snack mix?

Combine the popcorn, nuts and pretzels up to two days ahead and keep them in an airtight container at room temperature. Add the chocolate shards, the zest and the salt on the day. Salt draws moisture out of a coating over time and citrus zest dries out and stops smelling of anything within a few hours, so both belong at the last minute.

How do I stop the popcorn going soft in the mix?

Keep moisture and heat away from it. An airtight container, not a bowl covered in cling film, and never the fridge, where condensation forms on the coating the moment it comes back out. If a bowl has been out all afternoon and has gone slightly chewy, spread it on a tray in a 140 degree oven for 5 minutes and let it cool completely before it goes back in the bowl. It has to cool to crisp up again, so do not test it warm.

Can I make this nut free?

Leave the truffle nuts out and use a second box of chocolate pretzels in their place. That fixes the peanut, cashew and almond in the mix, but the Chocolatier speckle still says it may contain peanut, almond and hazelnut, so this is not a mix to send to a school. For a properly nut free table our children's Christmas food guide is the better starting point.

What else goes on the table

A bowl of this and a jar of something to suck on covers the gap between lunch and dinner without opening another cheese. The golf themed jar at $7.95 does that job and doubles as a small gift afterwards. If drinks are involved rather than an afternoon in front of the cricket, our Christmas drinks board lays the same ingredients out flat instead of tossing them together.

Kangaroo Island Honey Popcorn is $7.95 for an 80g box and sits with the rest of our gourmet popcorn, next to the snacking range and the festive entertaining essentials for the rest of the table. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post.