Chocolate Bacon Popcorn (with a popcorn bucket template)

Did you all know that National Popcorn Day was yesterday?  Yeah, I didn’t either, but I had been planning to make some popcorn anyway.  That’s just how I roll.  Haha!  I had been toying with the idea of a sweet and savory taste for quite some time and figured that popcorn might as well be my guinea pig for the experiment.  This post has really turned into three tutorials at once, so let’s jump right in.

For the popcorn, you will need unflavored popcorn, bacon salt and semi sweet chocolate.  I like to pop my own corn, so I buy a small bag of corn kernels at the grocery store and put 1/4 cup into a paper lunch sack and microwave for about 90 seconds.  Of course, the time needed will vary by microwaves, so you  would need to watch yours the first couple of times to make sure that it does not burn.  1/4 cup of uncooked kernels makes about 2 to 3 cups of popped corn.  I ended up making my own bacon salt by frying up 8 slices of bacon, being sure to cook it nice and crispy…almost burned.  I put my cooked bacon in a Ziploc bag and mashed it into a fine dust with my rolling pin.  You could certainly do this step with a food processor, but I was just too lazy to pull mine out.  With your bacon crushed, add 1/4 cup sea salt and 1/3 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper and mix it all up.  And there you have it folks, bacon salt!

With your bacon salt prepared, spread your popped popcorn onto wax paper and melt your chocolate.  I used some semi sweet chocolate chips that I had in my pantry and melted them in the microwave, stirring every 25 seconds.  Once melted, you may need to add a tiny amount of vegetable oil to help it thin out enough to drizzle.  You will want to drizzle the chocolate over your popcorn; I like to use a small dessert fork for this.  Once you have done that, sprinkle on your desired amount of bacon salt before the chocolate cools.

I served my popcorn in small paper buckets that I made.  I have included a template for you to print out and make your own.  I love that you can customize these by simply using colored paper, ribbons or stickers, labels, you name it!  Make it your own!  To make one, print off both templates and cut around the solid line.  The perforated lines are where you will need to fold.  Once you have cut and folded both sheets, you can use either hot glue or double sided tape to stick them together.  The small tabs are all meant to be on the inside and hidden, so that is where you will want to apply your glue.

My foray into the sweet and savory world was a very successful one that my family really enjoyed.  I think that we will be making this popcorn quite often from here on out!

To print the template, you will need two pieces of 8.5 x 11 inch paper.  Click on the picture below and right click to pull up the options.  Select “save picture.”  You should now be able to go to your pictures folder and see the image.  Once there, you will notice a “print” option on the top bar.  Click that and make sure that your settings are for full page printing.

Linked at C.R.A.F.T. and So Much Better With Age