Bored Bacon

I'm SOOOO BOOORED. Oh do you hear the echos all the way to your house? And schools only been out for a week and a half! (in their defense it was raining out all day) So what do you do with a bunch of bored kids? Give them cookbooks of course! Yes I did, I gave each of my adorable kids a cookbook and a pack of post-it notes with one instruction. Find ONE recipe that they would like to make special with just mom. Well this is what Little Miss Bacon found.

And the bottom of the book has just as many notes on it too! She started with a full pink pad, and then ran out about 2/3's of the way though so she had to finish off with Bacon Jr's green ones. Needless to say she found some yummy recipes, and I will remember not to give her the 'bake goods only' cook book again! But she did have fun. I did tell her to narrow it down to which one she'd like to make first. Let's just say she's still deciding!

Here is Little Boy Bacon's book. He found quite a few also. He wants to start with a lemon cheesecake he told me so that will have to wait until we go shopping for all the supplies. But he's so excited to try it.

As for Bacon Jr. well, he looked though an entire cookbook and only found two recipes he really wanted to make. At least he was trying to follow the rules! It just so happened that one of the recipes we had everything on hand for, Vanilla popcorn. (the other is a chocolate Carmel cheesecake!)

All the kids were very excited to get to make something and try something new.
Here are the ingredients you need.

Vanilla Popcorn
3 quarts popped popcorn (it's 12 cups, I had Bacon Jr. help figure it out! Yes a math lesson too!)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, cubed
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Place all your air popped popcorn into a large bowl and set aside.

In sauce pan combine sugar, butter and corn syrup.

Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Bring to a boil. Once it's boiling you want to boil it for 2 minutes stirring constantly. After 2 minutes remove the pan from heat.

Stir in baking soda and vanilla and mix well. It will turn thicker. See!

Pour the mix over your popcorn and mix well.

Let it cool for a few minutes in the bowl. Now it's time to spread it out on wax paper and let it cool.

The recipe says to break it up, I kinda dropped it by clumps on the paper and broke up any remaining clumps. Let it cool all the way and then it's time to enjoy!

So how did they like it? Bacon Jr. LOVES it. Little Boy Bacon didn't think it was too bad, and Little Miss Bacon said she didn't care for it. You can't win them all. Honestly I didn't think it was bad at all. It's not as dry as carmel corn, kind sticky too so make sure you keep some wash cloths around. A handful of M&M's make it a great special snack too.

In all it was a fun time with the kids. And they liked baking a treat they picked out. We will be back baking more together and I will share them here too. I have a few other tricks up my sleeve to keep them busy this summer too and I can't wait to share them also! I'll be tagging them as summer fun so it will be easy to find if you happen to hear the 'I'm bored's" at your house too!