Kettle Corn, Any One?

I love baking, but I find that the more I bake the more sugar I consume.  And the more sugar I consume, the bigger my belly becomes.  :-) So I came across sucanat sugar and blonde coconut sugar at my local health food store, which I, of course, bought immediately.  The blonde coconut sugar is supposed to be interchangeable with white sugar, and the sucanat sugar is supposed to be interchangeable with brown sugar.  Plus, I did a little research, and both sugars have a lower glycemic level than white sugar.  Awesome!

I was excited to get started in the kitchen and test drive these new sugars.  Last night I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies with my new sugars.  Surprise!  Surprise!  The cookies actually came out tasting great!  I had a cookie fresh out of the over, and the sucanat sugar provided a molasses taste to the cookies, which makes me believe this type of sugar would be great with ginger bread cookies.  However, when the cookies were completely cooled there was no molasses after-taste. 

So tonight I thought I would try to make kettle corn with the sucanat and blonde coconut sugars, since the cookies turned out amazingly.  I figured the popcorn would have more of a carmel taste to it, due to the color of the sugar and the nature of how the sugars melts.  Haha!  Both batches tasted like burnt popcorn.  Neither batch had the carmalized sweet taste I was expecting.  In the past I've tried using brown sugar and stevia; again, the results were horrible. 

The conclusion in this experiment is that if I'm going to be making kettle corn, I will be using real white sugar.  If anyone out there has mastered making kettle corn with alternative sugars, please let me know your secret. 

Kettle Corn Recipe:
Ingredients -
- 1/4c. oil (I use either canola or coconut oil,olive oil will leave an olive taste)
- 1/4c. sugar
- 1/2c. popcorn kernels
- 4 qt. sauce pan with lid

Directions -
- Put oil in sauce pan on medium heat and let oil heat up
- Add sugar to oil and mix until sugar is dissolved
- Add kernels to sugar/oil combination and close lid
- Wait until you hear popping and then start shaking sauce pan over heat (**Be sure to shake every 30 seconds or sooner.  This will keep popcorn from burning.**)
- Once popping starts slowing down immediately put popcorn into bowl (**Popcorn will burn if you do not take popcorn off heat right away**)