Maple sugar
19th century style
Fake maple syrup bums me out. And not only because it rarely contains real maple. (Most brands are a mix of high-fructose corn syrup, preservatives and artificial flavors.) It’s because maple syrup is perfect just the way it is. Naturally sweet, it also retains trace vitamins and minerals, even antioxidants. It’s still a sugar, so let’s not go crazy. But for pancakes or baking, or drizzling over oatmeal or yogurt, it can’t be beat.
Great lore, too: Legend has it that a Native American woman brewed up the first batch accidentally. Her husband, heading off to hunt one morning, yanked his tomahawk from the tree where he’d thrown it the night before. Sap ran from the cut and into a container at the base of the tree. The woman found the liquid, thought it was water, cooked in it and got a sweet surprise.
Over time the inevitable happened, and someone got the bright idea to make an imitation of the real thing. Real syrup’s high cost and limited availability no doubt influenced the shift, and early fake versions did contain a decent amount of actual maple. But, really, messing with maple syrup is just plain wrong.
I let my daughter taste the imposter in a restaurant once, because I wanted her to understand the difference, and thankfully she wrinkled her nose and went for the good stuff. (Food nerd alert: Yes, I bring my own maple syrup if we’re going out for breakfast. It’s just what I do.)
But even kids who haven’t grown up with real maple syrup can learn to appreciate it. And one way I guarantee you’ll get their interest is at a maple sugaring event.
Sap on tap
We’re fortunate in western New York to have Genesee Country Village & Museum, a living-history museum that also has a nature center. So we get syrup with a side of history. But you can find maple events throughout northeast North America. (Here’s a shortcut for my fellow New Yorkers.) If you live elsewhere, but your region has maple trees and cooperative weather, it’s likely you can find maple events near you, too. And now is the time — the season wraps up around the end of March.
At our maple sugaring outing last year, Tess and her best buddy sampled sap straight from the tree (it tastes like sweetish water), as well as syrup from maple, birch and shagbark hickory trees (the last one is made from boiling down the bark, not the sap). They had maple-glazed walnuts and maple snow cones (syrup over shaved ice). We skipped the maple cotton candy, but heard such rave reviews that we might taste it on this year’s trek. (And, hey, the cotton candy machine was invented in 1897.)
But the best part was the sugaring camp set up to show how early settlers collected, transported and cooked down the sap — techniques that haven’t changed a whole lot in the last few centuries. The equipment is better, operations are bigger, but the end result is pretty much the same. So the girls got a small-scale, up-close view of sap boiled down to syrup, boiled further still to maple cream, and further still to maple sugar. Forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. No wonder real maple syrup is expensive. But so worth it.
Have you visited a sugaring event? Tapped your own trees? Had other maple adventures?
The original version of this piece appeared on Spoonfed last March.
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Christina Le Beau
This sounds just like our house! We’ll be tapping this week. Should have been done last week but we had the “ick” bug going around. I love this post. I’m hoping to get more pictures of our sugaring activity this year. We really enjoy hosting homeschooling familes for a day of sugaring with sugar on snow and homemade icecream!
I’ve never got sugaring before and would love to try! Living in the North Country, I used to get spoiled with real maple syrup at (most) restaurants.
ha! love that you bring your own syrup. do you use flask?
this is a sore spot between me and hubby. even though he grew up with a real maple syrup loving mom, they couldn’t always afford it so used imitation most of the time. when i made the switch to maple syrup only in the house it caused major tension at the breakfast table. part of it was a scarcity issue, i wanted to teach the boys how to use “a little” to sweeten up pancakes, oatmeal, etc. hubby likes a side of pancake with a syrup serving, so the portion rationing due to cost and health really bugs him. i catch major hell at a restaurant when i encourage the boys to dip their pancake bites into the serving of syrup, instead of dumping the entire container that is served on top like nana and dad do.
it’s a flavor thing too, he prefers the fake stuff. the idea of using syrup in a non-syrup setting makes him anxious. brown sugar goes in oatmeal, not syrup, it’s a law you know??!? argh.
Jenna: A flask? Too funny. I should, since it’s illicit. But no, I use a small syrup jug that we got from a local farm. Have to be honest, though, and tell you I’m in the drench-your-pancakes camp. Which is one of the reasons we buy maple syrup in bulk (the other being that it’s our sweetener of choice, both for baking and everything else). Fortunately we live in maple syrup country, so I never have to go far to find the big jugs. And I store those in the freezer, refilling a smaller jug in the fridge as needed. Freezing syrup is great because it gets thick, but doesn’t actually freeze.
Hi Christina,
Great, timely post. I love maple syrup and use it in so many ways (we don’t use refined white sugar in our home). My daughter was supposed to see maple syrup tapping last week, but it was postponed due to rain. 🙁
There is no other option for us than the real stuff. I, too, bring my own supply of real maple syrup to restaurants and other functions. At first it was a joke amongst our friends, but now they just accept it. Glad I’m not the only one!
Oh, and thanks for the suggestion to freeze. I always buy half gallons and they take up a lot of space in my fridge.
Jennifer
http://www.kidoing.com
Great post! Living in Virginia, we don’t have too many opportunities to see maple sugaring, but this year I discovered a local place not too far from us that makes maple syrup on their farm. So, we’re going out there at the end of the month to pick up our order of syrup. I bought ourselves two pints and got some for the relatives. I’ve been very excited about getting local syrup, usually I just buy stuff from up north.
Holly,
I don’t know where you are in VA but in Monterey (in the Shenendoah Valley) they have a Maple Festival each March where you can get local syrup and see the collection process. We’ve gotten our syrup this way for about 2 years and it’s great! I always thought I didn’t like the real stuff until I had the VA version…maybe my taste buds have just matured.
J in VA
I adore real maple syrup too! I have never seen a maple syrup tapping, but would love to and I know my 4-yr old would love it too {plus, I love driving home where our food comes from- what a great & fun… and tasty lesson}.
My son was just asking me the other day where maple syrup comes from (we only use real … although my husband used to use imitation, and my son remembers and knows that we stopped using it since it wasn’t real). So, I was thinking I would take my kids to see how it’s made. Your link totally helped — I just discovered a nearby festival happening next weekend. Can’t wait! Thank you.
I’d love to go that festival! Maple syrup is my go-to sweetener, partly because it adds just a little more than sweetness and partly because it’s easier to pour it out of the bottle than to get down the sugar and a spoon.
My stepdaughter had to teach herself to like it because she grew up wit the fake stuff. When she first tasted real, she was embarrassed that she preferred Aunt Jemima. She confessed to me, and we worked on it until her tastebuds adjusted.
Thank you for that link! We’ve been going to Maple Sundays for a few years now, but only heard about the places we went by word of mouth. Now that we live somewhere where we don’t know anyone, I’m excited that we can still find a sugar shack to go and enjoy Maple Sunday at!
Great post. As a Canadian, I’m a huge lover of maple syrup and we try to eat the real stuff. There’s a phenomenal urban harvesting group here in Toronto that’s making syrup more accessible – homeowners in the city who have maple trees on their lawn can sign up to get help tapping their own trees! http://www.notfarfromthetree.org/archives/2175
Krissy, I love that urban-sugaring idea. We also live in the city and have a few maples, which we’ve talked about tapping. Never have, but I really think we should.
My girls and I just finished reading Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. If you haven’t had the pleasure, it’s heavy on descriptions of preparing foods for winter, hunting, harvesting, and the like. When the “sugar snow” arrived it was beyond exicting and we had a grand time reading about how the maple sugar was made and celebrated. Love that book.
Cindy, we’re big Little House fans. And yes, love the sugar snow stories. For our daughter’s 5th birthday two years ago, we rented a log cabin in a nearby park and had a “Little House in the Big Woods” party. It was December, and the cabin was heated only by a fireplace, so it was quite an authentic experience!
How brave! Sounds like good times…and a good excuse to cuddle!
Ha, huddle is more like it. Which is what we all did around the fire. But it was actually pretty fun. Everyone came dressed for the weather, and a bunch of people went sledding. We read Little House stories, made butter, strung buttons and beads, and built with Lincoln logs (I borrowed a huge basketful from our toy library). And drank lots of hot beverages. The girls got bonnets, the boys got farmers’ hats and everyone got maple sugar candy. Definitely a memorable party.
We just finished reading that, too (my boys are 7 & 4). I had no idea so many sugaring activities were still available (we live in Washington State), so now I want to travel & participate some day…
What a great article and we are thrilled that you profiled us!!!
We are all getting ready for our Sap, Syryp & Sugar which starts next weekend! We’ll have the sugar camp mentioned in the article as well as activties in and around the village-A scavenger hunt for kids, maple food tasting, maple syrup tasting and even maple sugar cotton candy! There will be dance lessons/demonstrations at the town hall as well as our annual Pancake Breakfast!
We’re writing a curriculum this March for maple syrup. I love this post.
Thanks Christina.
I have never had the chance to see maple-sugaring in action, but it’s something I’d love to see. We use only real maple syrup, but living so far from the source it seems wasteful and not very environmentally friendly. I just read recently about palm syrup, and while it’s not something that’s commercially available, I’ve wondered at the possibility of trying to make it ourselves.
Kris, you should definitely try making palm syrup. Maple sugaring, Hawaii-style.
We just took the kids to a Maple Sugar “Farm” last weekend. Lucy drank sap right from the tree and it was a revelation for her. She clutched her little bottle of maple sugar to her chest the whole day after. We will be tapping our own trees next year. The kids made me promise.
Thanks for posting this. It’s great to remind people to get out to the woods. For any reason.
Kim
PS: Oh and have you ever had Maple Tea which is sap boiled only half way down. Why it isn’t served at restaurants is beyond me. Delicious.
YM, wow that maple tea sounds crazy good. We have some maple teabags that we bought in Canada, but that’s entirely different. I’ll have to see what the maple folks say when we do our annual trek next weekend. And I’m pretty sure we’ll be tapping our maples next year, too. My daughter’s school is collecting sap right now, boiling it down in crockpots, so we’ll see how much syrup they get out of it.
i just watched Dirty Jobs in Collection 6 (on nexflix), mike was at a sugar camp. After the maple sap was heated initially they added some chemical that took out the sugar sand (grit? sugar crystals?). I didn’t catch the name of it. Curious if all syrup processors use this chemical and if the processing technique is harmful to health.
Jenna, you piqued my curiosity. While I know some maple syrup producers use chemical defoamers (more on that in a minute), I’d never heard of chemicals used as you describe. So I looked up that episode, then tracked down and called the farm itself (Wagner’s Maple Sugar Camp in Pennsylvania).
Turns out the additive was diatomaceous earth (powdered sedimentary rock), which is used as a filter agent. Apparently it collects in the filter papers, creating a super fine filter that catches the sugar sand left at the end of processing. So nothing harmful there.
Now, maple syrup producers do use something called a defoamer to dissolve the foam that develops during heating. Basically any fat will do, and it’s literally just a couple drops. At GCVM, the 19th century village I describe in the post, they do it old-school, using a hunk of bacon that drips fat as it heats up over the pots. And some modern producers still use things like cream or butter. But most producers these days use vegetable oils or synthetic emulsifiers. You can avoid synthetic defoamers (and GMO vegetable oils) by buying syrup that is certified organic. But we’re talking minute amounts (I read one place that it’s like a pea-sized drop of defoamer for 10 gallons of syrup).
Great blog! Just recently found you on KOA! Looking forward to catching up on your posts. We are headed to Genesee CV&M for maple sugaring this weekend! Nice to get a sneak peek! Thanks!
Leandra
The Whimsical Sweet
http://thewhimsicalsweet.com
Oooh- maple cotton candy is amazing! We had some at the Pennsylvania Farm Show when I was a teenager and mom and I still talk about it. I’d love to get my hands on it again.