Painted popcorn!

I will confess, what follows here is a stolen idea--and aren't those the best kind?--taken from my new favorite obsession www.pinterest.com. If you've never checked out that website you simply must, especially if you love to collect recipes, ideas for home improvement projects, or crafts. It's basically like twitter except with graphics. Useful and fun!

So, I ran across a "pin" from one of my mom friends on there about painting popcorn (and marshmallows) using milk and food coloring (click here to see the original post). It sounded fun and I was hungry so it was a shoe-in for today's afternoon craft time with Gi while Noa was sleeping. I used sweetened condensed milk and neon food coloring gels for a home-made take on that tutti-frutti colored popcorn I loved so much as a kid at any amusement park.  Next time I may experiment with finding that tutti-frutti flavor by adding some fun extracts to the condensed milk. I'm thinking coconut and strawberry might just do the trick! Oh, and since I said that, why not make popcorn balls of this for trick-or-treaters this year! Yay! Now, I'm thinkin'--and see how it pays to steal an idea every once in awhile? ;)

Update: I couldn't wait to try the extract idea so after posting this I ran back to the kitchen and added orange extract to the orange coloring, raspberry to the purple and coconut to the green. In a word? AWESOME! So if you choose to try this at home, please I urge you, do not stop at painting your popcorn beautiful colors, add some flavorings and your kiddos will go gagga for it! Okay, you may also need to make a double batch so they have some leftover after you eat it all! Not that it happened like that at our house or anything.