Pom Poms

While reading through Almost Bourdain, I found a post where Ellie asks "what is the goodness you get by combining dulce de leche caramel, chocolate, popcorn, toasted coconut and peanuts?". Well, the answer is these delicious pom poms but I didn't even wait to read it before I headed to the kitchen to try them.

Ellie's husband thinks these taste a bit like Snickers bars. Now, I love the odd Snickers bar but I think these are way way better. I have to admit I was a little lazy in the construction of these (hey, I was still sick. That's my excuse, anyway), but they were still absolutely awesome.

They are also very easy. I made my dulce de leche according to the instructions in Ellie's post. I'm a little apprehensive about the whole boiling of the can and I didn't really fancy having to wait 3 hours, so an easy alternative suited me down to the ground. It took me a little longer than 10 minutes to get a lovely caramel colour, but it was so exciting watching the butter and condensed milk change colour and consistency. I tasted a little along the way, just to make sure everything was going well.

Ellie's recipe also calls for toasted shredded coconut, but I am not a big coconut fan so I omitted this. I can't think how they could have been better taste-wise, so I don't think leaving this out was a problem.

My laziness ruined things a little when I used microwave popcorn. I didn't take the time to make sure that only popped kernals went into my bowl and unfortunately our little sweet parcels did sometimes have unpopped kernals in them. D did not like this at all and was quite disappointed, as he liked the taste but didn't want to risk coming across something hard. I was more than willing to chew carefully because they were tastier than any caramel popcorn I've ever had, but they did take something away from the whole experience.

So, next time I have to be much more careful with my popcorn quality control. Other than that, they were a breeze to make and they are so tasty you would think they needed far more effort than they do.

This post is again a little delayed (I made these over two months ago) and writing this has made me realise how good they were. I now have a little jar of dulce de leche sitting in my fridge and I think I have some popcorn somewhere, I may have to try and make these again very very soon.

See the post Pom Poms over at Almost Bourdain for Ellie's recipe.