Lately I’ve been determined to come up with a gourmet snack that can be eaten in cafes. After a few failed attempts of popping light fluffy popcorn with my old faithful pot, I decided to go out and buy a new one. Unfortunately, this was on the same day I had to study for my sanitation test, make a meal for my nephew and so on. I decided to stop at a boutique neighborhood liquor store named “Lush”. At first, I was determined on purchasing one of my favorite rums to cook with, and then I stumbled across a dessert wine that in my opinion has a sweet deep rich almost smoky flavor.
From what I was told Commandaria St. Barnabas is an amber-colored dessert wine made from the indigenous Mavro and Xynistery varieties of red grapes. It is supposedly the world's oldest named wine still in production. And it is beautiful to cook with. I love the hints of smokiness and oak tones that it has.
I figured it would compliment the caramel I was making perfectly. After two attempts of making vanilla apple caramel, I started to get it down. Fortunately, I have a thermometer that reads up to 250 degrees fahrenheit (which happens to be the hardball cooking stage, which makes caramel firm) Any thing around 300 to 310 would make nothing more than candy for lollipops. In order to ensure that my caramel was thick I cooked it longer than usual and carefully watched the temperature.
As far as ingredients went I used organic expelled apple juice, boiled it down until it was syrupy, added brown sugar, corn syrup (I’ll use an alternative next time) butter and Bourbon Madagascar vanilla. I added a bit of organic powered milk to give it a bit of creaminess. I added about two tablespoons of the Commandaria wine during the last stage.
UPDATE
I replaced corn syrup with Organic Brown rice syrup, which tastes great!
I added pecans and heated for good measure and rotated the popcorn for a half an hour
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