Best Ever Popcorn Balls Recipe

Love this soft chewy recipe!!!! EASY!!! A quick way to make balls is to oil a cup(measuring cup works well) ans stuff coated popcorn in. A tap to the bottom of the cup onto waxed paper leaves beautiful balls! Yum!! I've made them a few times and love them but add 2 teaspoons of vanilla to flavour Remember to butter hands before playing in coated popcorn or it'll stick!.

Just did a batch of these. Fantastic! A couple things... 1 cup plain white sugar works if you are out of powdered. More than 1 cup is too sweet in my opinion. Our local Aldi is getting rid of halloween stuff, so I grabbed a few 10oz bags of Pumpkin Spice Marshmallows for .15 ea. 10 drops of red food coloring makes a deep candy red color that works great for the holidays. I will also do green. I also added a few dashes salt and a little bit of vanilla extract. I also picked up Almond and Peppermint, so I'm sure those will work good also. If you go too much on the Corn Syrup, the balls will be too gloppy at the bottom. Too little, and it won't bind when you ball them. I also found five minutes for cooling was not enough, as they started to fall apart once balled. 8 to 10 minutes leaves plenty of time for them to still warm enough for balling, and they form much nicer. I found that I could tear off a small sheet of cellophane, and drape it over the top of the ball, scoop it up, and wrap it all at once. I didn't see any point in using a cup, or trying to place sheets down first. Wetting hands in small bowl of warm water for each ball, let you pack it like a snowball firmly, each time. It didn't seem to dilute or wear off any of the coating. I may try the oil or shortening method just to be sure. This recipe is quick and easy.

Used Mediterranean Mommy's ideas (less sugar, adding salt and flavor) but instead of "regular" powdered sugar I whirred up some brown sugar in my Vitamix and used that instead.

I used 3 bags pop secret homestyle popcorn. Removed all old maids and put each bag in a separate bowl. I changed the powdered sugar to 1 3/4 cups and added 2 tsp. of vanilla for flavor. I separated the syrup mixture into 3 pans after it was done and kept one white and added green food coloring to the 2nd pan and red food coloring to the third pan. You have to move quick so it doesn't cool. That way I had red, green and white popcorn balls for Christmas! They turned out really good and so yummy!

I also added vanilla. They turned out great! I accidentally found a great way to keep them from sticking to your hands while forming them. Liberally coat your hands with butter then run them under cold water but do not dry them, just shake off excess water and form your popcorn into balls. As soon as it feels like they are starting to stick, just run them under cold water again and repeat.

As others suggested I added 1/4 tsp salt and 3/4 tsp vanilla extract at end of melting marshmallows. Yielded 14 balls sized slightly bigger than a baseball. Like that these are soft and slightly chewy.

This was the first time I made popcorn balls and they tasted great. I did make the recommend adjustments from others by adding 2 tsp vanilla, cutting back on sugar, and adding 2 tsp sea salt. I did not give 5 stars as I thought it took a bit more time than given in recipe. I felt it was cumbersome to mix all the popcorn with the coating. I did use food handling gloves which helped. I ended up working with 4 large bowls to stir and coat properly! So a bit messy, but worth it. I would make again. I added candy corn and took these to a Halloween block party tonight and they were a definite hit, especially with the kids.

The only tip I would give is to sift out the kernel's before you make the syrup coating and before your ready to form the balls. I put 1/2 of the popcorn into a large bowl and shook it. Most of the kernels will fall to the bottom. I picked up the popcorn with my hands and transferred to another large bowl. Once I got to the bottom it was all kernels and threw them out. Then, all my popcorn was ready to be formed. I then made the syrup covering.

These are definitely easy to make, held together nicely, and very eay to work with. I used latex gloves and buttered them to prevent stick and mess. No candy thermometer required, they are soft and chewy but had to deduct one star for lacking in flavor. I did add a half tsp vanilla but could have added more. It lacked a little 'something'. I did make them for the holidays so added some holiday colored peanut M&M's. looked very pretty and festive.

These came out great! I scaled it down to 6 cups of popcorn as a 'trial run', and I was happy with the results. I also used butter and added a little salt and a 1/2 tsp of vanilla to the corn syrup mixture. I'll try it with some maple extract another time. I also added a handful of mini candy corn to the popcorn, adding a few more to the outside of the balls. They came out soft and chewy, but I'm wondering how long they'll stay that way. Thanks for the recipe!

These were very good. I'm giving them 4 stars because they were so difficult to work with. I tried spraying non-stick spray on my hands but was not successful. I took another reviewer's suggestion and forced the popcorn into a measuring cup, but it was too difficult to get it out. Then I tried butter on my hands...after much maneuvering, this finally worked. After forming the balls, I noticed they were falling apart on the sheet I had placed them on. So, more shaping was required. I quickly wrapped them in plastic wrap hoping to help them retain their shape. Whew! It was quite a fight to form these into balls. But they do taste good. Because tomorrow is Halloween, I added Pumpkin Spice Candy Corn to the balls...very festive. I may make these again, but do to the difficulty, probably only once a year for Halloween. I didn't want too many popcorn balls, so I halved the recipe...it yielded 6 medium-to-large popcorn balls. UPDATE: 10/30/17 Made these again and had no trouble forming them into balls because I did as written and used some shortening (Crisco) on my hands. Not nearly as much as the video displays, just about 1 teaspoon for every 3 balls. I don't know why, but this time I got 11 popcorn balls approx. the size of a large baseball (not quite a softball). I varied it this year and added a teaspoon of vanilla flavoring, roasted peanuts and milk chocolate chips...tinged them orange and enjoyed festive and very tasty Halloween popcorn balls! My husband sai

So yummy! I need to figure out a better way to get it mixed and put into a ball

This recipe is pure madlad energy.

Perfect without any changes

Seriously, this blew me away.

Absolutely love them! Best recipe ever!

I would not make these again. They turn the popcorn into a sticky marshmallow hunk of goo, they didn't even resemble popcorn afterwards. I'm going to try a different recipe that doesn't call for marshmallow or confection sugar. There's a recipe that calls for just light corn syrup, butter and vanilla. This is how we had them as a kid.

This will definitely be a repeat in my kitchen.

Very sweet!!! Too much powder sugar and very very very hard to form into a ball.

I put notes down and my fam loved it