Black Cherry Delight Popcorn

One of many awesome wedding gifts we received was a cookbook titled 101 Things to do with Popcorn. There are some interesting recipes inside and some really fun ones. I've made a couple and decided to try something new tonight. I didn't have the right ingredients for anything specific from the book, so I mixed and matched and came up with my own concoction. 

To start, you need some popped popcorn. We don't want the special butter or movie popcorn you can buy in the store because we're putting our own topping on it. So we want to start with about 1/3 cup of unpopped kernels and we're going to dump them in a regular old brown paper lunch bag. 

Fold up the top of the bag so the kernels don't come out as they pop. 

My microwave has a popcorn setting. If yours doesn't, just put it in for about 3 - 4 minutes and listen for the popping to slow. 

After the popcorn is popped comes my least favorite step. It's a little awkward, but necessary if we don't want to break our teeth. 

Using a wire rack on top of the bowl of popcorn, tip the bowl over and shake it. The unpopped kernels will fall through the wire rack. 

Once finished with that step, add about a half cup of mini marshmallows to the popcorn. 

Now it's time to mix up the topping. Heat 4 Tbl butter or margarine with 1/4 cup light corn syrup. 

Add 2 Tbl sugar and 1 packet (.3 oz) black cherry gelatin. Once well mixed and heated, remove from heat and add 1/4 tsp baking soda. This will make it fizz up a bit. 

Quickly, while the topping is still hot, pour it over the popcorn. If you let the topping cool too much, it won't melt the marshmallows. 

Then mix it up. If you want, you can let it cool on a baking sheet. If you're like me, you won't want to wait. 

Doesn't that look tasty? 

Store it in an air tight container. I don't recommend eating it all in one sitting, it's very sweet. But very tasty!