Wondering how to get through the last month of winter? An extra hour of daylight (thank you, whoever thought of that brilliance), spring skiing in the sunshine and maple candy made in the snow should certainly do the trick.
We recently spent an uber-New Englandy Saturday morning tapping maple trees at a local farm. The kids loved drinking the fresh sap along with a few sips of locally made maple syrup.
I don’t think topping the tapping experience off with maple candy was entirely necessary, but we had to do something with all the snow that arrived a few days later.
We modified Catherine Newman’s maple snow taffy recipe into these coin size sucking candies. The kids played Willy Wonka as they made candy molds in the snow and wrapped and decorated our treats.
Maple Snow Candy
Ingredients
- 1 cup maple syrup
- 1/4 cup salted butter
- clean snow (or ice cream)
Instructions
In a medium-sized pot over medium heat, melt the syrup and butter together until the mixture reaches 220ºF-235ºF (about 5 minutes after it comes to a boil) or until the mixture is a bit thick and a light brown caramel color.
Let the mixture cool for a couple of minutes. You can pour it by the spoonful over bowls of clean snow (or ice cream). We made our candies by poking holes in a tray of clean snow (with a clean finger or the tip of a funnel), then filling in the holes with our syrup mixture.
In a few minutes the maple candies harden. Now just a little snow removal and you’ve got homemade sweets.
We poured some of the maple syrup mixture into a plastic candy mold and also made lollipops to be a bit safer for my little one. You can see quite a bit difference in the candy colors – the candy mold batch was a nice light caramel color which looked and tasted much better than the slightly burnt lollipops.
I tasted them and they were great. Skiing was a blast. Need more weekends like that
While I’m completely nervous to pin this and jinx the Spring weather we are beginning to have I’m going to do so anyway because this looks like so much fun! No jinx, no jinx, no snow, no snow…