Description
A festive and crunchy white chocolate popcorn treat combining sweet vanilla candy melts, salty pretzels, colorful red and green M&Ms, and decorative Christmas sprinkles. Perfect for holiday snacking or gifting.
Ingredients
Scale
Popcorn Mixture
- 1/2 cup popcorn kernels (104g)
- 1 1/2 cups broken pretzel pieces or baby pretzels (75g)
- 1 (10 oz) bag green and red Milk Chocolate or Mint M&Ms
Coating
- 1 (12 oz) bag Vanilla Candy Melts
- Christmas sprinkles (quantity as desired)
Instructions
- Pop Popcorn: Pop popcorn in an electric popcorn popper into a large bowl following manufacturer’s directions, or pop microwave popcorn bags as an alternative. Remove any unpopped kernels to avoid hard bites.
- Mix Ingredients: Toss the popped popcorn with broken pretzel pieces and M&Ms evenly in the large bowl.
- Melt Candy Melts: In a microwave-safe bowl, melt Vanilla Candy Melts at 50% power in 30-second intervals, stirring well after each until smooth and fully melted.
- Combine Coating: Drizzle half of the melted candy melts over the popcorn mixture and gently toss with a rubber spatula to coat.
- Finish Coating: Drizzle the remaining melted candy melts over the mixture and gently stir again to evenly coat the popcorn, being careful not to over-stir so the sprinkles will adhere properly.
- Add Sprinkles: Spread the coated popcorn mixture evenly onto wax paper, then sprinkle Christmas sprinkles liberally over the top before the white chocolate sets.
- Cool and Store: Allow the mixture to cool completely and harden, then break into pieces. Store the Christmas Crunch in an airtight container until ready to serve.
Notes
- Using 1/2 cup kernels yields about 16 to 17 cups of popped popcorn.
- If you don’t have an electric popper, you can pop popcorn using the brown paper bag microwave method or pre-packaged microwave popcorn.
- For more visible M&Ms and pretzels, set aside 1/4 of these before coating and sprinkle them over the top along with the sprinkles.
- This recipe fills 8 to 9 party treat bags sized 1/2" x 4", about 2/3 full—great for gifting.
- The recipe was adapted from Bake at 350 and updated to use a 10 oz bag of M&Ms due to packaging size changes.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cup
- Calories: 150 kcal
- Sugar: 15 g
- Sodium: 120 mg
- Fat: 7 g
- Saturated Fat: 5 g
- Unsaturated Fat: 2 g
- Trans Fat: 0 g
- Carbohydrates: 20 g
- Fiber: 1 g
- Protein: 2 g
- Cholesterol: 0 mg
