As the holidays approach, families fall into their individual
traditions. For 70-year-old Nick Seaton, Christmas can’t arrive
without caramel corn
– tons of it.
Leigh Lawson – Special to the Dispatch
As the holidays approach, families fall into their individual traditions. For 70-year-old Nick Seaton, Christmas can’t arrive without caramel corn – tons of it.
Baking 30 batches every year, Seaton has bagged popcorn stacked up on a spare couch. Inside his San Martin home, the sweet smell of butter and brown sugar permeates the air.
Starting the day after Thanksgiving and working up until the last days before Christmas, Seaton busily bakes the buttery treat for six hours a day, three days a week in his modern kitchen. For the past 15 years, he creates the sweet and crunchy snack and hands it out to relatives and friends. It’s best when it’s fresh, he says. He, his daughter and his wife take turns delivering the finished caramel corn as it is produced.
From time to time he samples a batch, but Seaton doesn’t frequently indulge. He compares this to when he worked at a candy plant and cooked Lifesavers candy. “The first couple nights you eat a lot, but after that it becomes passe,” he said.
His adult daughter, Cheryl Seaton, equates the caramel corn smell with the holidays. “We have a fake Christmas tree because there are allergies in the household, so the Christmas smell in the house is caramel corn.”
During the rest of the year, Seaton doesn’t cook or bake. “If I could, I’d live on sandwiches,” he said.
He’s never altered the recipe and never considered making another treat instead. The decision to make caramel corn was a coincidence.
It all started 15 years ago when Seaton’s wife, Gayle, brought home a caramel corn recipe. That year she made four or five batches to give to her friends as holiday gifts, but the year after, the work fell on him. The rest is history.
Besides his 7-year-old granddaughter who acts as the family’s official taste tester, Seaton is the sole member of the household who bakes the treat. He doesn’t allow either of his two young grandchildren to help him because the caramel is boiling when he pours it on the popcorn. “Besides, it’s the after part they like.”
Since he started, the family’s acquaintances grew. The family gets together before the start of the holiday season and organizes a list of friends and family members they want to treat.
This year, the list is up to 50 people. He estimates he spends around 100 hours making the confection each holiday season.
Seaton says he plans on making caramel corn for at least a few more years.
His friends certainly look forward to it. A few of them get antsy and ask him when it’ll be ready. One friend suggested the caramel popcorn is so tasty, he should sell it. But Seaton enjoys making the caramel corn as a hobby and thinks selling it would ruin the fun of his holiday tradition.
Seaton, who is retired, puts many hours into the task. Last weekend, he made three batches in one day.
“That’s nine hours a day,” he said. “That’s like work.”
The family keeps some, of course, for themselves, and his daughter, Cheryl, said she still likes to eat it, though she now eats less.
“I used to eat it all the time, and my kids certainly do. Now I try not to because it’s very addictive. It’s like potato chips; once you start eating it, you don’t want to stop.”
Nick Seaton’s Caramel Corn Recipe
Recipe yields three gallons of popcorn
1 pound popcorn kernels
1 pound butter
1 pound brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
Pop the popcorn. (Nick pops his in an air popper.) Place the popcorn into four shallow greased baking pans. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. In a saucepan, melt butter, brown syrup, and corn syrup together on low heat. Increase to medium high heat once the butter is melted, and heat for five minutes as it boils. Stir occasionally. The syrup should be thick and a uniform color. Take the saucepan off the heat, and add baking soda, salt and vanilla. Pour over popcorn and stir popcorn. Put two baking pans in the oven, taking them out every 15 minutes to stir popcorn. Bake for one hour and let cool before packaging. Repeat baking process with the other two baking pans of popcorn.
