Holiday baking: Popcorn treats to rival Christmas cookies

Holiday wreath popcorn treatsIn a few days it will be December, and I'll be combing the cookbooks for the year's selection of holiday cookies.

Each year, I pull out my mixing bowls, cookie cutters, baking sheets and cooling racks with visions of all the Christmas cookies I'll bake to bring joy and happiness to family and friends.

But what we holiday bakers rarely envision is the inches our work will likely add to the waistlines of our loved ones. I'm thinking of that (and my own waistline) this year.  So, rather than help pack on the pounds as usual, I'll mix it up with a few lower-impact cookies like the frequently tested Slender-doodles, and I'll be working in some popcorn treats as well. 

The popcorn wreaths and balls shown are colored with lime gelatin mix and decorated with bits of candy. They're held together by a buttery mix with melted marshmallows -- something like rice crispy treats made with popcorn instead of cereal.

While I love the Christmas-cute factor of this holiday recipe/project from popcorn.org, I'll likely go with one of the site's chocolaty options.

There are chocolate covered popcorn and nut clusters that  would probably do as much damage as a cookie, and then there's the figure-friendly Cocoa Popcorn Crunch, where cocoa powder, millk and sugar make the crunchy coating.

I have not yet tested any of the chocolate popcorn recipes, but I like the fact that making the Nutty Chocolate Caramel-Corn Clusters amounts to melting 12 ounces of chocolate chips with a cup of light corn syrup and 1/4 cup of butter in a saucepan and pouring it over 12 cups of popped popcorn mixed with a cup of almonds or peanuts. Once everything's mixed together, the result is spread on a baking sheet and baked 40 minutes at 300 degrees. All I have to do at that point is remember to stir it every 10 minutes. Seems a lot faster to make than many of the cookies on my list.

Jar of treats decorated with Mod Podge by Plaid

As written, the chocolate caramel-corn recipe makes 24 servings with 179 calories per serving, 9 grams of fat (4g saturated), 6mg cholesterol, 10mg sodium, 24g carbs, 2g fiber, 12g sugars and  2g protein. With a larger serving, the Cocoa Popcorn Crunch has 148 calories and only 1 gram of fat per serving (and that's made with whole milk), 1mg cholesterol, 6mg sodium, 35g carbs, 3g fiber, 26g sugars and 2g protein.  

 Popcorn also has the advantage of being a high-fiber, whole grain food that starts out at about 30 calories per cup if it's air-popped. So the add-on calories in these recipes, obviously, are from the chocolate, milk, nuts and sugar. 

For those who want to avoid sugar, popcorn.org also has a number of savory seasoned popcorn blends. And because popcorn.org is the official site of the National Popcorn Board, whose role is to promote popping corn, there are some unusual ideas. How about using popcorn to top a salad or soup, or blending it into cornbread or meatloaf?

For anyone who would give popcorn as a gift, there's a project at plaidonline.com that can turn a recycled glass jar into a festive Christmas container like the one shown at right.  It happens to be filled with flavored popcorn, which perfectly illustrates the idea here.

Click on the pictures to go to the pages with instructions for both projects.