As a mom who wants to feed her children a healthy, whole foods diet, I always make sure to have popcorn on hand. If we have an unexpected play date or there’s “nothing to eat” according to my children, I can always pop some popcorn and nobody will go hungry. I buy organic popcorn kernels to avoid genetically modified organisms, and even with their higher cost, flavored popcorn only costs about $.25 per 2-cup serving. It’s one of the most affordable whole grain snacks you can make.
There are so many different ways to flavor popcorn, and this version is a great way for chocoholics like me to enjoy chocolate without compromising healthy eating principles. Adapted from this chocolate popcorn recipe, the chocolate coconut version here adds some healthy fat to the mix. You can substitute chocolate chips for the baking chocolate if that’s what you have in your cabinet.
Ingredients:
½ cup organic popcorn kernels
3 tbs. coconut oil
1 ounce unsweetened baking chocolate
3 tbs. maple syrup
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tbs. unsweetened shredded coconut
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
- Pop the popcorn with an air popper.
- In a roasting pan, place the coconut oil, chocolate, maple syrup, salt, and vanilla. Put the pan in the oven while it preheats to melt the coconut oil and chocolate. Remove the pan from the oven and stir the ingredients to combine evenly.
- Add the popcorn to the chocolate mixture and stir to coat. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring every few minutes. It’s done when there are no soggy pieces left in the pan.
- Cool on a wire rack and stir in the shredded coconut. Store the popcorn in an airtight container.
What healthy snacks do you like to keep on hand at all times?
Awesome idea for my sugar craving afternoon snack!
Love the recipe, but meta-analysis of over 2,000 scientific studies have demonstrated no health or environmental benefit of organic over GM. I studied genetics and I avoid organic not only because of the price, but because it perpetuates baseless pseudoscientific fear-mongering.
While we may not be able to prove, at this time, the safety or lack of safety in eating GMOs vs organic foods, I think we can all agree that they are infinitely more harmful to GROW than organic foods. One only needs to look at the timing of hive collapses vs timing of sprays, as well as the heaviest areas of round-up sprays vs the monarch migration paths to see the effects first hand. You’re right though – we do not yet have enough data to prove the harmfulness or safety of consuming these foods as those studies simply haven’t been done in sufficient number or in looking at long-term cumulative effects. Scary, eh?