My 2024 Student Christmas Gifts

I know it’s a bit late to give you a student Christmas gift idea for this year, but now you have a head start on 2025! 🙂

This year, I made homemade caramel corn!

Not only was this the first time I’ve ever given caramel corn to my students, but it’s the first time I’ve ever tried making caramel corn, period.

In this post, I will give you a step-by-step tutorial on how to make caramel corn. It was a very economical gift that was enjoyable to make.

I’m thrilled with how they turned out, and students were delighted!

If you’re interested in homemade food ideas for student Christmas gifts, you might also be interested in >>>My Perfect Homemade Student Christmas Gift: Hot Cocoa

Make the Popcorn

I used the recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. So good!

While I give you all the ingredients and amounts in this post, grab the recipe from her site if you want to see the recipe written out in full recipe form. 🙂 I have a couple of tips I learned from experimenting that weren’t on the original recipe, though, so here we go!

You need a nice large bowl and preferably an air popper.

I did a trial run of making the recipe before I did the batch for my students. One important thing I discovered is you have to be VERY careful not to leave unpopped kernels in the mix, or it’s not fun to eat, not knowing when you’ll suddenly chomp down on a hard kernel. I didn’t want to be responsible for any of my kiddos breaking a tooth!

If you don’t have an air popper, one method Sally explains in her recipe is to pop the popcorn in a paper bag in the microwave (no oil). You want oil-free popcorn, so the caramel sticks. The microwave method left a lot of kernels, though, so I borrowed an air popper from my mother-in-law! It definitely did a better job.

Just to be safe, I went the extra step and “strained” the popcorn using a cookie cooling rack.

I have two different cooling racks. One has a much smaller hole, which worked perfectly for the task at hand.

Voila! Broken teeth disaster averted. LOL

The recipe called for 70-75g of popcorn, yielded from 1/2 cup corn kernels. I ended up with 85g, and it was fine. My husband actually liked that the caramel corn wasn’t completely coated. If you prefer a heavier coating, keep it in the 70-75g range.

This is a perfect example of why I love having a digital scale in my kitchen!

(Check out all my kitchen favorites here.)

Prep the Oven and Make the Caramel

Go ahead and preheat your oven to 200°F. It doesn’t take too long to hit such a low temperature.

Line two half-sheet pans with parchment or silpat.

In a medium saucepan, combine:

1 cup (200g) packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup (80g) light corn syrup
1/2 cup (113g) unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar

Beware, the ingredients will puff up in size here in a minute!

Stir over medium heat until melted and bubbling around the edges until it hits 234–235°F (112–113°C) – about 4 minutes total.

Watch it closely.

(Here’s my favorite digital thermometer.)

As soon as it hits 235, take it off the heat and sprinkle on 1/2 t. baking soda and give it a gentle stir. This is where it gets fun.

Wait for it….let it double in volume.

Isn’t it pretty? 🙂

Pour it over the caramel corn, scraping the pot to get it all!

Stir gently to coat.

Divide between the two cookie sheets and bake for 1 hour, stirring gently every 20 minutes.

Bag, Weigh, and Make Cute

Thanks to one of Joy Morin’s previous Christmas gift posts, I got these cute music note cellophane baggies on Amazon.

Once again, using my OXO Digital Scale, I weighed out approx. 50g of caramel corn (1 3/4 oz) into each bag.

This resulted in 8 bags from one batch of caramel corn. You could certainly do more but I don’t know that I would do less than that. The amount was the perfect fit for these baggies.

If I had thought ahead, I would have just bought twistie ties, but I didn’t, so I just manually tied them shut using some ribbon.

I purchased the little piano keyboard ornament on Etsy. At the time of purchase, the solid black ones were only $0.99. At the time of this post, though, the solid-color ones are sold out. There are others available, but for $3.99 apiece.

What do you think? Have you ever made homemade caramel corn?

One of the benefits of a smaller studio (under 20) is that you can do things like this. I still had to make three batches to cover all my students, so it ended up being a half-day project overall, but it was worth it!