simply eat. snacks // maple cinnamon popcorn

I simply love popcorn but I know the cinema or shop bought stuff is usually so bad for you, plus the cinema stuff is wildly overpriced! £3+ for a small?! Plus I can never figure out why they cook popcorn in so much fat and then top it with extra butter, sugar etc... The plain stuff is pretty sin free but also pretty boring and I don't expect you to eat it that way! But by making it yourself you at least guarantee that you know exactly whats gone into this tasty snack.

There are a variety of ways to 'pop' your popcorn, the traditional in a pan, air pop or microwave. If you air pop or microwave then you don't need to add any additional fat in the cooking which is great, so you are left with a healthy wholegrain snack!

• Traditional - Heat 1tsp of vegetable/plain oil (around 36kcals)in a large pan with a lid, preferably glass. Once the oil is warm add in enough corn to just cover the bottom of your pan, toss to coat in the oil and leave to heat up. Once the kernels start popping shake occasionally to make sure the unpopped kernels fall to the bottom to get more heat. Keep doing this until the 'pops' become 4-5sec apart.
• Air Pop - This requires a special machine that just heats the kernels with hot air so just follow the instructions for your machine!
• Microwave - I have yet to try this technique but apparently you just put the kernels into a brown paper bag, fold over tightly and chuck in the microwave like the ones you buy! Check out this blog post here for more info...

So now you have your popcorn let's get down to flavouring those tasty little nuggets! Now the amount of topping you add is totally up to you and depends on how much popcorn you have popped...

• Add 2-3tbsp Maple Syrup and 1/2-1tsp Cinnamon, add gradually and taste in between, it shouldn't be overly sweet. (If you're interested 1tbsp of Maple Syrup = around 45kcals)
• Toss well to coat and then tip onto a large baking sheet. 
• Pop into a warm oven (100c ish?) and cook for 10mins, turn out the oven and leave to cool. This stops the popcorn going soggy and keeps it lovely and crisp.
• Scoff!! Although I didn't need to tell you that did I...

This is just one of probably hundreds of different recipes out there and now you have the basics go experiment with your own weird and wonderful flavour combos! Just let me know if you come across a good one...

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