How to Make Vegan Caramel Apple Popcorn
This popcorn is tossed with freeze-dried apple pieces, nuts, and maple caramel. The recipe is ridiculously delicious, quick, easy, and much healthier compared to traditional caramel popcorn!
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup jumbo popcorn kernels (Alternatively, you can use 7 cups of store-bought lightly salted popcorn)
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- 1 cup freeze-dried apple slices, broken into large bite-sized pieces
- 1/4 cup roasted, unsalted, peanuts or pecans
- 1/4 cup unsweetened coconut cream (Use only the thick cream and none of the water. I place my can upside down in the refrigerator for an hour to help separate the cream from the water!)
- 1/2 cup maple syrup, 100% pure
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, 100% pure
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp flakey sea salt
Instructions
- If making homemade popcorn, add the coconut oil into a large stockpot over medium-high heat. Place four popcorn kernels inside and cover with a lid.
- Once the kernels have popped, pour the rest of the kernels inside and cover.
- Shake the pot vigorously every few seconds to ensure the popcorn cooks evenly. Shake quickly, though, as you don't want the pot off of the heat for too long.
- When the kernel popping slows down to about 3 seconds apart from each other, remove the pot from the heat. Give it one last good shake, and then dump the popcorn into a large bowl.
- Toss the dried apple pieces and nuts into the popcorn.
- Now, preheat the oven to 225 degrees Fahrenheit and line a large sheet pan with a piece of parchment paper.
- Next, combine the coconut milk cream, maple syrup, vanilla extract, and kosher salt into a medium-sized saucepot. Place over medium/medium-high heat and bring the mixture up to a boil.
- Once it is at a steady boil, set a timer for 5 minutes. Stir occasionally.
- Turn the heat off, add in the baking soda, and stir the caramel quickly until well combined and even in color. The baking soda will react with the caramel and make it pretty foamy at first, so stir quickly.
- Quickly use a rubber spatula and scrape all of the caramel evenly over the popcorn. Stir the popcorn immediately to coat it in the caramel.
- Dump the caramel popcorn on the prepared sheet pan and spread it across evenly. Sprinkle the flakey sea salt over the popcorn.
- Rest the pan on the middle oven rack and bake it for 30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through. Do NOT stir the popcorn.
- Allow the popcorn to cool completely at room temperature before eating. Then, it is best eaten immediately upon cooling down. After a couple of hours, the popcorn may slightly soften. I like to store mine in an airtight container in the refrigerator the keep it super crunchy!
Tried this recipe?Let me know how it was!