Make EPCOT Caramel Corn With This Step-By-Step Recipe (PLUS PHOTOS)! | the disney food blog (2024)

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Missing your favorite EPCOT snacks until your next visit to the park? SAMESIES!

We especially miss one of our favorite snack spots — Karamell-Küche —with all its AMAZING caramel treats. Its name literally means “caramel kitchen,” so they know their stuff! If you’ve never wandered over to the sweet shop in the Germany Pavilion, Karamell-Küche is home to fudge, brownies, cookies, apples, and basically ANY other treat you can imagine, covered with lots and lots of Werther’s Original Caramel.

If you can’t visit Karamell-Küche to get some of their famous treats right now, you can make your own version of one of its most popular snacks right in your kitchen! So, get ready to make movie night even better with this version of the Werther’s Caramel Corn Recipe!

We tore through a lot of caramel corn recipes on the internet but none seemed to add up to that delightful treat we know and love. Most used baking soda, which we don’t recall ever seeing in the open kitchen while the caramel corn was prepared, so we came up with our own recipe!

Note: We stand corrected! An authority on the subject reached out to correct us that the real recipe DOES, in fact, contain baking soda. They would say no more than that (so don’t expect the ACTUAL recipe to be revealed!), so all of our digging, it seems, was in vain. 🙁 BUT we can tell you this yields a delightful tasting caramel corn quite similar in taste and texture to Karamell-Küche’s variety we were still more than happy with.

Baking soda reacts with the caramel when added after it’s cooked, causing it to foam up slightly; this allows the caramel to coat the corn more easily. This recipe provides ample caramel to cover a standard batch of popcorn so it should still yield good results! We hope you like it!

Ingredients

• ¼ cup of coconut oil
• ½ cup of popcorn kernels

• 1 ½ sticks of butter
• 2 cups of sugar
• 1 can of evaporated milk
• 1 tsp of kosher salt (2 tsp if using unsalted butter)
• 1 cup of light corn syrup (All our store had in stock was dark — that works too if that’s all you can find!)

Recipe

Popcorn:

Note, we’re making our own popcorn but by all means, grab a bag of your fav microwave popcorn and pop it up instead!

1. Set your stove on medium to high heat. Melt the coconut oil in a deep pot with a lid.

2. Once melted, add 3 kernels of popcorn to the pot. Wait for them to all pop! After they do, scoop them out and dump the rest of your kernels inside the pot.

3. Shake the pot quick to evenly disperse the kernels. Cover the pot and immediately take it off the heat.

4. Wait 30 seconds before putting the pot back on the heat. Once the kernels start popping vigorously, begin shaking the pot until the popping slows or stops.

5. Immediately dump your popcorn into a bowl so it doesn’t burn!

Caramel:

6. Wipe out your popcorn pot. Add 1 stick of butter, sugar, evaporated milk, kosher salt, and corn syrup. Now’s a good time to slip a candy thermometer on your pot.

Make sure to stir it well until you start getting that GORGEOUS caramel color!

7. Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. Be patient!! This will take some time. It will seem like your thermometer isn’t budging then it will take off after a few minutes!

8. Stir continually until the temperature reaches “hard ball” or 266 degrees F on the candy thermometer. Make sure to watch the thermometer very closely as you wait, stirring the entire time! Accuracy is key when making candy! Note: we don’t recommend doing this without a candy thermometer. The difference in a few degrees could mean you’re left with sticky syrup or rock hard candy, so eyeballing it is NOT recommended!

9. When it hits 266 degrees, turn off the heat and move the pan off the hot stove.

10. Stir in the extra ½ stick of butter.

11. As soon as it melts, dump the popcorn into the pot…

…and stir until it’s coated. You’ll want to work pretty quickly since the caramel will start setting up as it cools.

12. Pour the popcorn onto a sheet pan…

…and spread it as evenly as you can manage. It will start to set by this point.

Let it cool completely before breaking it into smaller bits to eat!

And, there you have it!! You’ve got your own Caramel Corn just like in EPCOT (we haven’t been this excited about popcorn since we tried our Cheesy Chocolate Caramel Popcorn hack!).

While you’re baking up a storm in your kitchen, you can also make Nudel Gratin and giant Soft Pretzels from the Germany Pavilion. Oooor you can even try your hand at a few Flower and Garden Festival recipes! Whatever you pick, we bet your kitchen will smell just as great as Karamell-Küche (ours sure did!) 😉 Guten Appetit, friends!!

Looking for more Disney recipes? We’ve got all the park eats and treats you need here!

Have you tried the Werther’s Caramel Corn from EPCOT before? Let us know in the comments below!