Sweet Success

If icicles were made of sugar, this is what they would taste like. Oooey-Gooey, cold and oh, so sweet....maple candy was a hit.

Nobody under the age of 6 delayed in mentioning the fresh blanket of snow on Thursday morning....a good covering, fresh, white and most important, clean snow, just right for the long awaited maple candy adventure. The morning started with excited calls from upstairs..."Snow! Fresh Snow!"...followed by a little "Maple Candy Day" song and dance.

Around here, everyone has a job to do. No freeloaders. So while I googled for a bit of maple candy know-how, the smaller hands were assigned the chore of finding the freshest, whitest snow and filling the pans. (a job Laura and Mary were responsible for as well)

Momma was in charge of the adult role of boiling the syrup. All the recipes I found were careful to remind to maintain the syrup boiling, being careful not to allow it to boil over. That's a very, very, very fine line. It might have been possible if I wasn't also dealing with 2 impatient confectioners, plus a baby who decided her nap time was over.

All eyes were anxious to see what would take place in our history lesson-turned-science experiment. The snow melted away and a chewy maple toffee formed.

It turned out to be disgustingly sweet. In fact, a webpage I read suggested eating it with sour pickles and coffee to cut the sweet. We opted against that and just produced a massive sugar high.
They want to try it again (no surprise) with the next fresh snow. Next time we will try making hard candy....requiring a mite bit more patience (and attention!) during the boiling process.

Interestingly, we saved little bits for DaddyHealy to try when he got home from work, but when we pulled the pans back inside in the evening, the syrup had all dissolved, making it more of a maple snow cone. All the more reason to try again.