How to Make Gold Popcorn

Give us a sweet and salty, tasty snack but make it festive. OK, you got it! We’re going to teach you how to make gold popcorn or, at least, gold looking. Sure there are some recipes out there that use actual gold leaf to decorate cakes and popcorn but, hey, we’re working on a budget here. Besides, it may be edible but it doesn’t really sound all that delicious. Another option is to spray the popcorn with edible gold spray. That’s probably OK but still doesn’t sound overly delicious.

But you know what does sound delicious? White chocolate and sanding sugar, gold toned of course, and candy sprinkles, also in gold tones. We’ll save the actual gold for our jewelry. Why do you need gold toned popcorn, you ask? Our usual answer is – why not? But, really, are you maybe throwing an Oscars viewing party and want to stay with the theme? Or a New Year’s Eve party that you want to make extra festive? Or, actually, any other fancy pants party where you want something more elevated than corn chips? Gold popcorn is the answer to all these questions.

We’ve convinced you, right? So, all you need to do is pop a batch of our amazing movie theater popcorn, melt some white chocolate and stir in gold sanding sugar or luster dust until it shimmers. Then pour it over the popcorn along with some salt because salt makes things taste good. Then top it with a bunch of gold sprinkles and here we believe that more is more because sprinkles are fun.

There are two ways to make colored popcorn. If you add food color to a sugar syrup, like we did with our red popcorn here, it needs to be baked to harden and keep the popcorn crunchy. But the method we’re using here, with chocolate, doesn’t need to be baked because the chocolate will harden on its own.

You can just serve this in big bowls and be done but we’re going to be more extra than that. While you’re picking up the gold sprinkles at the party supply store (or maybe on Amazon), go ahead and grab a pack of inexpensive gold popcorn boxes. They usually come in a flat pack and you just easily assemble the bottoms. Then fill them with the gold popcorn and set them out for guests to enjoy. Now you’re the correct amount of extra. And, for the record, you don’t have to throw a huge party to be extra with gold popcorn because it’s sweet and salty and delicious. Just make a batch for the family and put on a great movie to enjoy it with.