M&M’s® Popcorn Crunch for Movie Night

This shop has been compensated by #CollectiveBias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions and M&M’s® Popcorn Crunch for Movie Night are mine alone. #MovieNight4Less

 

My husband and I are like many parents in the fact that a night out with only the two of us is extremely rare. We try to have a date night, but something always doesn’t work out right. Either we can’t find a sitter, or another event pops up, or he has to work. A few weeks ago, I heard someone on a TV show talking about date moments. Date moments are those little times that pop up throughout the day or week that are not planned dates but are still times for couples to reconnect. Hearing about date moments made me feel better about our “dating” life because we actually get several of those during the day. We are actually getting pretty good at date moments! One of our favorite date moments are at-home movie nights. We put the kids to bed and enjoy a fun movie with a snack. As a former library worker, I’m a sucker for movies based on books, especially books that I’ve read. And the movies don’t have to be geared only towards adults- I like them all! This past week, it was my turn to choose the movie for movie night. I decided on a movie that I’ve seen countless times but never gets old: Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 1. And this week, I spiced it up with a special snack to correlate with the movie. This M&M’s® Popcorn Crunch is great for any movie night, regardless of the theme, because it can be colored to go along with any movie!

 

The M&M’s® Popcorn Crunch is salty, buttery, sweet, and chocolately. It’s made to fit anyone’s taste buds! But one of the best things about the recipe is that you don’t have to use the entire bag of Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn or the whole box of M&M’s®. So, if you have someone who wants to stick with traditional popcorn and candy, there’s still leftovers for them.

 

Ingredients:

• Orville Redenbacher’s Ultimate Butter microwaveable popcorn, 1 bag popped
• 3 M&M’s® theater size boxes in any variety (milk chocolate or peanut butter work best)
• Colored candy melting discs in the desired colors

 

All the Harry Potter fans out there will know that Hogwart’s is divided into four houses: Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Slytherin, and Gryffindor. Each house has it’s own color, which conveniently corresponds with M&M’s® colors. Lucky me! I made four batches of popcorn crunch. Each batch matches one of the Hogwart’s houses with colors of red, green, yellow, and blue. To make sure that each batch was uniform, I divided the M&M’s® from each box and took out the colors that I needed.

If making all four colored varieties, begin by separating the popcorn into four separate bowls. Melt a half a bag of each color candy melting discs as directed on the bag. Stir one color over each bowl of popcorn. Stir in the M&M’s® that match each batch and immediately place the mixture on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Place the cookie sheet in the refrigerator for five minutes for the chocolate to harden. THE MELTED CANDY DISCS WILL COVER THE M&M’s®, I want to make a point of that because my husband wanted to know where the M&M’s® were in the crunch. They’re in there but hidden. For one batch I used white candy melting discs with blue M&M’s®, and I deliberately photographed that one below so that you can visualize it.

After five minutes, remove the M&M’s® Popcorn Crunch from the refrigerator and break into snack sized pieces.

This is an easy, colorful snack that makes a sweet and salty movie night snack! It’s so fast that I can even make it at the last minute before movie night. I made a quick Instagram video just to prove how simple it is.

 

A video posted by Melanie (@ithappensinablink) on Nov 11, 2014 at 8:24am PST

 

If you’re feeling crafty, make a few little labels and items that reference the movie to go along with the snack. I made labels that have the beginning letter of each of the Hogwarts’ houses on it, as well as a card stock saying that is a throwback to the sorting hat. I wish I had an actual sorting hat. We’ll just have to use a cowboy hat for now.

After it’s finished, settle in for a date moment with a classic movie or a new found favorite.

 

If you’re looking for a movie for date night, Walmart is offering several titles for a special promo price from 11/11/14-11/24/14. I picked up this Harry Potter movie for $5. Blue Ray Discs are $7. In addition to several Harry Potter titles, there are several others, such as The Dark Knight, I Am Legend, and Ghost. These movies will be at selected stores on a special pallet along with M&M’s® and Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn.