Gold Hunt and "Golden" Popcorn Recipe

A couple years ago my sister and I decided to have a big St. Patrick's Day Party. We made Irish Food and I started St. Patrick's Gold Hunt. I hid rainbows throughout the house and they let to a pot of gold. My sister was nice enough to post a free print out of rainbows for you to use.
Our "pot" broke (we used a witch's cauldron from Halloween), so this year it was a basket. We started out doing just gold-wrapped candies. But this year I decided to make some "Golden" Popcorn. It was a big hit.

Caramel Popcorn

adapted from my Grandma Smith
6-8 c popped popcorn
1 1/2 c white sugar
1 c brown sugar
1/2 c white Karo Syrup
3/4 c water
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
4 Tbsp butter
1 tsp salt

Put popcorn in 9x13 pan and warm in 250 degree oven. Cook sugars, Karo, and water to 300 degrees. Add butter and salt. When melted, mix well. Remove from heat and add soda and vanilla. Stir well (and fast!). Pour over hot corn and stir and stir. Pour out on table and mold with hands.

These instructions are taken straight from my grandma's recipe card. I don't mold into balls with my hands, but be careful if you do - remember the sugar is super hot!

Tips:

• Use a larger pot than what you think - when you add the soda and vanilla it will puff up a lot!
• If you want to double the batch, make in two separate waves. The sugar cools too fast to do one big doubled-batch.
• Be patient, it does take a little while to get to 300 degrees. 
• This is a crunchy caramel popcorn. The way to tell - soft caramel corn has sweetened condensed milk and crunchy has baking soda.