Gingerbread Crackerjack

Ingre­di­ents

• 20 cups air-popped popcorn
• 1 1/2 cups dark brown sugar, tightly packed
• 1 cup salted butter
• 1/2 cup light corn syrup
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 2 tea­spoons ground ginger
• 1 tea­spoon cinnamon
• 1 tea­spoon cardamom
• 1 tea­spoon vanilla
• 1 tea­spoon bak­ing soda

Instruc­tions

1. Place the popped pop­corn in a very large bowl. Like huge. Like twice the size of a large Tup­per­ware Thatsa Bowl. Set aside.
2. Pre­pare two bak­ing sheets by coat­ing lightly with butter.
3. Pre­heat the oven to 225 degrees F.
4. In a medium, heavy saucepan, mix the sugar, but­ter, corn syrup, molasses, gin­ger, cin­na­mon, and cardamom.
5. Bring ingre­di­ents to a low boil and let boil for 5 min­utes. Pull off the heat and add the vanilla and bak­ing soda and stir. Mix­ture will bub­ble up, so be careful.
6. Quickly pour over the pop­corn in the large bowl. Stir with a rub­ber spat­ula, lift­ing pop­corn up from the bot­tom, mak­ing sure to coat the pop­corn as well as you can.
7. Divide the pop­corn onto the two but­tered pans. Spread evenly, but do not compact.
8. Bake both pans in oven at 225 degrees F. for 1 hour, stir­ring pop­corn and switch­ing places of the pans every 15 min­utes. When fin­ished, let cool on pans before break­ing up and stor­ing in an air­tight container.