Peanut Butter Popcorn

I had to put this picture in. I'd planned to put the popcorn in a really cute bowl, add a backdrop and make it all cute for the blog - but the popcorn didn't make it that far. In fact, it was a good thing I took this shot, otherwise you would just have to take my word for how good this stuff is.

What you'll need:

8 cups popped popcorn

1/2 cup roasted/salted peanuts

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1 teaspoon shortening

1/2 cup peanut butter chips

1/2 teaspoon shortening 

What you do:

Put popcorn and peanuts in a large bowl. Make it a larger bowl than you think you will need. You are going to be mixing an ooey-gooey, lovely smelling mixture in there and you don't want it coming up over the rim and coating your shirt - trust me.

Melt the semisweet chips and teaspoon of shortening over low heat until smooth. Pour over popcorn and nuts and stir to coat. When I say that, I mean put your spoon on the far side of the bowl, scoop down (under all that good stuff) and pull it up and over on top of itself. This pulls the peanuts and chocolate off the bottom of the bowl and distributes it evenly. Do this until the popcorn is coated in the chocolate. Then spread it out on wax paper. You can snitch now if you'd like.

Melt the peanut butter chips and 1/2 teaspoon shortening just like the chocolate. Put it in a Ziploc sandwich bag, snip the corner off and drizzle it over the popcorn. You can snitch again if you'd like.

Let it set. 

If you can.

Maybe you can hide it in the fridge. That would speed the setting time and keep it out of view. Just put your wax paper over a cookie sheet to make it easy to move around.

 Of course, if your kids have noses like bloodhounds (like mine do) then you're out of luck. That's what I should name this - Out of Luck Popcorn - 

Variation:

Switch the amounts of peanut butter chips and chocolate chips. So you coat the popcorn in peanut butter and drizzle the chocolate. You can also leave the nuts out and sprinkle them over the wet chocolate if you'd like. That would look pretty too.