Birthday Cake Popcorn

What do you get when you mix sweet with salty? 5 extra lbs!!! Seriously, I don't even care for popcorn and this tasted great to me. I guess the pull of sweet and salty is more than I can fight against. I fought pretty hard though and only tasted a couple of bites.  Hopefully everyone at work will eat this and I won't bring any extra home.
The original recipe is found at:http://buddingbaketress.blogspot.com/2011/05/birthday-cake-popcorn.html
 This girl is a genius baker. She has some great recipes on her site. Check it out! 
There is not very many M&M's in my version because I purposely bought a VERY small box of them so as not to tempt me to eat any if there was leftovers. It worked. There might not be as many in the popcorn, but I did not fall into temptation. You see....there IS a method to my madness haha. 

1 bag of popcorn, popped
8 ounces of white chocolate candy coating, melted
4 heaping teaspoons of yellow cake mix
Mini M&Ms
Assorted sprinkles

Pop popcorn and spread out on a paper towel, removing any kernels or burnt pieces, and place in a large bowl. Mix in mini M&Ms. 

Melt white chocolate in the microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring in between, until melted and smooth. Stir in cake mix until smooth, then stir in about 3 teaspoons of sprinkles. Immediately pour over popcorn. Using a wooden spoon, mix the popcorn and M&Ms until completely coated. 

Pour out onto wax paper or into a wax-paper lined jelly roll pan and spread into a single layer. Sprinkle with sprinkles until festive, then let cool and harden. Break into pieces and enjoy! 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Popcorn

I am probably the only person in the world that does not like the smell of popcorn cooking. I'm not sure why I have an aversion to it. I guess it could be that my mom used to make it a lot. A LOT!!! I sure do love my mom, but I found it horrible to smell the popcorn. Even now when I'm at work, I want to walk into the staff lounge with my nose plugged when someone has been popping popcorn. So for someone that doesn't like the taste and/or smell of popcorn, I wasn't sure what I was going to think of this snack. I needed to make something to take to church tomorrow and I had all these ingredients in my house. Turns out it's actually pretty tasty. The chocolate and the peanut butter hide the taste of the popcorn well in this one. Now if I could just get my  house to get "un-stinky" from cooking it lol.

For popcorn: 8 cups popped popcorn 1/2 cup salted cocktail peanuts 1/2 cup corn syrup 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup peanut butter 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips For topping:  1/2- 1 cup milk chocolate chips 1 gigantic spoonful of peanut butter (You can use whatever milk chocolate to peanut butter ratio you want here. I like to use a lot of peanut butter to cut down on the sweetness of the chocolate)

Preheat oven to 300°. Grease a large roasting pan. Combine popped popcorn and peanuts in the pan.
In a medium saucepan, melt together corn syrup and sugar. Stir until sugar is thoroughly dissolved. Add the chocolate chips and stir until melted. Add  the peanut butter and stir until mixed together.  
Pour over the popcorn in the pan and stir to coat it well.
Bake for 30 minutes, stirring frequently. (I stirred mine every 7 minutes). Put on wax paper and allow to cool down. 
In a saucepan, mix together the topping ingredients. (milk chocolate chips and peanut butter). Drizzle over the chocolate popcorn and let sit on the wax paper until the new chocolate topping has firmed up. (This can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour depending on the weather)
Break apart and enjoy.

*original recipe from: http://www.yummly.com/