As a child I read and re-read the Laura Ingalls Wilder series and clearly remember when they made maple sugar candy by pouring hot maple syrup onto fresh snow. I decided to google how to do it and put some of this snow to good use! As a disclaimer, I have no "candy making" experience, nor do I have a candy thermometer or any other gadgets--I figured I could do it the old fashioned way following this website.
Charlie was thrilled with the idea (candy??!) and I put him to work watching the maple syrup as it simmered in the pot. The instructions were very easy--maple syrup in pot, heat at just barely boiling/simmering, until it changes color/texture based on the pictures on the website, then pour into a pan of pressed snow and let it harden.
Well my maple syrup didn't seem to want to get to the look of the last picture, so I decided to turn it up a bit. Result? Rapid burning (as in, within 20 seconds), the whole house smelling terrible, and a hard black tar I had to clean out of the bottom of the pan. Charlie was so sad I felt I had to give it another go...(and I was a little sad as pure maple syrup is not cheap, haha). So we tried again...and because I was so fearful of burning it again, I ended up dumping it on the snow too early. I was hoping for hard maple syrup candy, what we ended up with was really gooey stuff (and some melted and mixed into the snow). Charlie and Sam both ate some of it (and begged for more) so it wasn't a complete failure...but I didn't have the energy to try again. Maybe next snowfall!
No comments:
Post a Comment