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Strawberry Popcorn Coating

4K views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  laurenlulu 
#1 ·
Hi Everyone.

My first post, and I hope someone can help me out here.

I am attempting to produce a new popcorn product to Thailand in the form of a bagged popcorn snack.

The flavor will be strawberries and cream.

I wanted to ask the community what would be the best method for making a thin crispy strawberry flavored coating that we can coat the popcorn in.

We have all the industrial equipment (huge mixing drums) etc... I have tried a few recipes but none seem to coat very well. It seems to clump up too much or the strawberry flavoring burns in the heated sugar syrup, as it obviously can't handle the 300 degree temperature.

The composition we thought of was sugar syrup coating in coating drum, then once coating has cooled slightly and tacky to sprinkle on the powdered strawberry flavoring. Allow to tumble in the coating drum for a further amount of time, then sprinkle on a non-dairy creamer powder.

However, when we add the strawberry powder it just dries out the sugar coated surface and not enough powder sticks to give it enough flavor, and we are stuck for having a glue to hold the creamer.

So we are stuck really, we can't put the flavor into the sugar coating because of a burnt flavor and we can't add it dry because it drys the surface out. too quickly.

Would appreciate any help, if someone could relate a decent method, we will certainly give it a go.

Ideally, we want the popcorn the have a crispy coating as opposed to a soft caramel type. We were hoping that both the strawberry and creamer powders would amalgamate into the sugar coating, but this isn't happening.

Thanks in advance.
 
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#2 · (Edited)
Well.....

Keeping it simple, why not just go with Strawberry without the cream? Or perhaps a three step coating process that starts with the strawberry, goes to butter, than a dry creamer on top? But, perhaps the idea I like best---keep it separate....include powdered strawberry/cream in bag that is added after the customer heats up the popcorn, but sell both together in the same package. That way, customer's can choose to use real butter (or not) on the popcorn, and perhaps you can use less preservatives/transfats.

.......Not industrial in the least, so forgive any naivety.
 
#3 · (Edited)
Well.....

Keeping it simple, why not just go with Strawberry without the cream? Or perhaps a three step coating process that starts with the strawberry, goes to butter, than a dry creamer on top? But, perhaps the idea I like best---keep it separate....include powdered strawberry/cream in bag that is added after the customer heats up the popcorn, but sell both together in the same package. That way, customer's can choose to use real butter (or not) on the popcorn, and perhaps you can use less preservatives/transfats.

.......Not industrial in the least, so forgive any naivety.
Thanks for that input.

There are many flavored microwave popcorn products here. We are specializing in the already popped bagged snack. There is really only one type available ready to eat, and that is basic caramel coated.

We have the three major retail chains already interested and want us to produce some samples.

There is a huge niche here waiting to be filled and we intend to fill it, with a range of flavors with English strawberries and cream being the first.
 
#5 · (Edited)
Hm....

Can you produce anything 'freeze dried', like freeze dried banana chips? Could you do something similar with the popcorn?
Hi.

We did already research that. We can get freeze dried strawberry granules or powder from China, but is really expensive as it requires something like 8KG of fruit per 1KG of end product, and unfortunately we have to make this down to a price.

I have toyed with the idea of cold coating it with a wet mix of icing sugar and strawberry flavor and just before it is dried add the creamer and hope it sticks correctly.
 
#7 ·
Can you do a white "chocolate" coating for the cream aspect then go ahead with your strawberry, that way it would have something to stick to... ?
That is a very workable idea.

No need for a sugar coating, we can warm coat it with a white chocolate frosting, then once all coated can sprinkle in the strawberry powder.

I will give that a shot in the morning. Need to research eh shelf life. We are aiming at 12 months.
 
#8 ·
I'm not sure what products you have access to but this may give you a jumping off point. Many people here make flavored popcorn using Jello gelatin packets. Here's an example of a recipe but there are many..

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/gelatin-flavored-popcorn/

On Kraft's website is a part devoted to this as well.

I agree that it would be good to use white chocolate although as a drizzle over the candied popcorn.
 
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