Popcorn Balls

“Beetle's” Popcorn Balls

Ingredients:	Directions:
12 cups popped corn	Boil molasses, sugar, butter, and water together for 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Pour mixture over popcorn and coat well. Butter hands and quickly shape into balls. Yields about 20 popcorn balls.
½ cup molasses
¼ cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla*
1 cup powdered sugar*
2 tablespoons water
*Originally, white sugar was used and no vanilla added. The recipe was updated when the A&P came to town.

When my Mommaw (Alice Taulbee Cornett) was a little girl, popcorn balls were one of her favorite treats! She grew up on a farm in Mary, Kentucky in Wolfe County (about 20 minutes from Red River Gorge). They grew their own popcorn; it grew on a stalk just like sweet corn, so when they did their planting, they would grow a few rows of popcorn right alongside the sweet corn. The family had a corn crib on the farm where they dried and stored the corn until used.

Little Alice even milked the cows and churned the butter that was used in the recipe. (To be fair, she said everyone in the family had a hand in churning, even Pa Jim [Mommaw’s daddy]). She remembers her cows fondly. There was Blackie, Daisy, Mott, and Alice (Pa Jim bought Alice the Cow from Mommaw’s Granny, Leona). Mommaw guesses her granny named it after her because it was to be her cow.

There was no A&P in Mary, so the Taulbees had to trade for molasses. Their neighbors raised sugar cane and made molasses (and sold it at $0.50 a gallon). Mommaw remembers going down to their neighbors’ house and watching a batch of molasses being made. Her best memory is watching the little mule walk around in circles; he was attached to the apparatus that squeezed the juice from the sugar cane. Oh, and aside from popcorn balls, Mommaw explains molasses was mighty tasty with cornbread and butter.

After all the ingredients were gathered, Mommaw’s mother (Virgie) would make the popcorn balls. Popping corn, boiling molasses and sugar, and shaping hot food into balls was not the work for little children. Mommaw said she was fine with her mother doing the cooking, adding that later she was usually the one in charge of the family meals. She was the runt of the family, so while the stronger members were out tending to the farm, Mommaw stayed in and cooked lunch over a coal and wood stove. What kind of supper did a 12 year old cook, you ask? Why, soup beans, cornbread, and fried taters. She even made dessert: wild berry pies. The story of such wild berry pies is one for another day.