Of the many things I love about Pokemon, one of those things is the different forms and varieties you can have. It's part of why Eevee is my favourite, she has so many options for success! I love Meowth's different forms of Sneaky, Fancy and Trashman, and Alolan Raichu can have my entire bank account to enjoy as many malasadas as he wants. This love also extends to those funky lil dance birds, the Oricorio, but man oh man, is their popcorn a trial to make.
Now this one presented quite a few challenges, and I didn't go in as confidently as some of the other recipes I'd attempted. At first glance you think 'oh, well, it can't be too difficult! It's just one ingredient!'. Oh no, dear reader, that would be a grave folly for you to tread past.
You see, the colour of each popcorn presented an issue. The usual way that people use to colour popcorn is to colour sugar and pop it with the corn inside a covered pan while shaking. This option was not available to me, as we are currently moving house, and the box men stole all my pan lids, so, instead, I was forced to use a frying pan, with an oversized steamer lid. Not the end of the world, admittedly, but I did lose a trusty plastic lid warrior to the stove flames first, and the lid did not fit the pan at all, which presented its own problems.
Next issue I had was the sugar. I was using gel food colouring, as recommended by a very brief Tasty video on colouring popcorn, and those ladies really did not wanna have a meet-cute with the sugar lads, as much as I tried to play Cupid. Adding some water to ease mixing also did not help, as it only exacerbated caramelisation in the pan, making for sugary, sticky, non-coloured popped corn, which was exactly what I did not want... though albeit they were very tasty.
After several painful attempts to try dunking them in coloured water, which also dissolved the corn, or dabbing them with the gel, which made for puncture holes and too much blotchy pigmentation, I was at a loss. I hadn't even considered how I was adding the flavourings yet: peppermint red, strawberry extract pink, toffee yellow and bubblegum purple.
It was actually my cousin who came up with the corn-saving idea: sandwich bag dunk tanks. By adding the colouring and flavours to the bags and shaking them with wild abandon, we managed to get evenly distributed colour and taste without ruining the corn itself. It was a very sweet victory, all in all. The pink provided its own issue, as without the sugar we couldn't dilute the red colouring, so we elected to use a slightly different approach for that one. Using the coconut oil we were already using to cook the popcorn, we added some red colour and strawberry flavour to it and mixed it all together with a spoon, giving us a light pink colour that was then pasted onto the popcorn. It wasn't perfect, but it was distinct enough, and we were all too hungry to care by then.
Tastiness
Popcorn, by definition, is universally tasty, even without added extras, and overall each flavour took well and tasted good! With the exception of the pink, the coconut oil the corn was popped in didn't add too much, so the extracts themselves got centre stage, and it was nice to have more than one sparky option to pick from!
Difficulty: Recipe
Besides the hiccups during testing, the actual overall recipe isn't too difficult, but it is time consuming. With four different flavours and colours to adhere, it takes an amount of time from the start of cooking until presenting the food, so I'd dedicate at least an hour to prepping all the popcorn together. If you're just making one flavour, it'll take much less time.
Difficulty: Accuracy
I'm quite proud of the accuracy on this one! The colours are vibrant, and all pretty close to the source material, though it is a shame I couldn't find a presentation stand similar to the original. The Oricorio feathers are handmade by me with some cut coloured paper, kid-safe glue and some wooden cocktail skewers, and, not to toot my own horn, but they really add a lot to the authenticity overall. Yeah, I think I'm most proud of this recipe.
Final Recipe
Ingredients
- popcorn kernels
- coconut oil
- red food colouring
- purple food colouring
- yellow food colouring
- peppermint flavour or extract
- strawberry flavour or extract
- bubblegum flavour
- toffee flavour
1. Heat a pan over the stove with a small scoop of coconut oil and two tester kernels. When the kernels pop, add a handful more and cover the pan with a lid (hopefully one that is the same size as your pan), and shake every now and again to shift uncooked kernels to the bottom.
2. Once all kernels are popped, move the popcorn to a baking sheet or large bowl to cool and turn off heat.
3. When cool, separate the popcorn into four equal servings.
3. In three separate plastic sandwich bags, line the inside with red, purple and yellow food colouring, one per bag, and small drops of their respective flavourings.
4. In a small bowl, thoroughly mix together strawberry flavouring with coconut oil and red food colouring. You should have a light pink mixture afterwards.
5. Add the equal servings of popcorn into their respective bags and hold seal tightly before shaking and rustling. Make sure every piece has been coated evenly for the best final results.
6. With the last batch of popcorn, take a spoon or oil brush and coat in the strawberry-coconut mixture, again making sure to throughly coat all popped kernels.
7. Once done, pour the popcorn into a large serving bowl to share, and add Oricorio feathers. It's a popped miracle!
