Heart moving with the wind

I’m quite sure that the very first time I ate popcorn, it was the multi-coloured candied variety. I just assumed that was what popcorn was and had no idea most commonly it was eaten in its natural colour, seasoned with butter and salt.

Country fairgrounds with their ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, laughing clowns and petting zoos were where you could buy candied popcorn back in the 70′s. It was packaged in conical-shaped plastic bags hanging from the bunting that looped around the canvas roof of the market stalls in the fairground. You could buy a bag for a few cents and it was big enough to live off for the rest of the day.

Country fairgrounds have changed a lot since the 70′s but one thing that’s remained unchanged is the conical-shaped bags of candied popcorn hanging from the roof of the stalls. For me candied popcorn conjures up warm memories of a day of great excitement and anticipation at a country fair where the only other thing I probably ate that day was a bag of fairy floss (cotton candy).

When Queen asked me to try their new food colour gels that come in blue, green, yellow and blue, I had just seen candied popcorn in the supermarket and wondered how easy it would be to make my own.

It’s actually very easy. You just make the popcorn then make a sugar syrup and add a few drops of Queen food gels. And you don’t need more than a few drops as these are strongly concentrated gels and a little goes a long way.

But candied popcorn also needs to be flavoured. I bought Fresh As fruit powders that are freeze-dried fruit ground into a powder. There are no additives and the powders are intensely flavoured. I used raspberry, passionfruit and pineapple. If you don’t want to use the powders or can’t source them, Queen has some essences that can also be used like lemon, orange, coconut and strawberry.

Queen’s gel colours are wonderful to use. The colours are strong and give a clean and vibrant result. I’ve seen recipes for candied popcorn where jelly crystals are used to provide the colour for the popcorn but by comparison this gives a very muddy, muted and wishy-washy result. The gel colours also have no bitter taste as some other brands do; these gels didn’t affect the natural flavour of the popcorn at all.

It’s very easy to control how much you use with the gel colours as there’s a very fine tip on the tube and with a gently squeeze you can have just one drop coming out at a time. Because of the way the packaging has been designed, you don’t end up with a mess in your kitchen as there’s no bottle to knock over and spill.