Maple Cream

Well I'm feeling pretty happy with my two successful attempts at making maple syrup products this year. The maple candy on a stick and the maple candy in molds were both easy, fun, and delicious.

The girls and I decided to try a recipe for maple cream, sometimes referred to as maple butter. I've eaten it once in the past, but never tried making my own.

I measured 2 cups of finished maple syrup in to a sauce pan. Then, I boiled it until the syrup reached a temperature of 235 degrees. I used a digital candy thermometer for this process and it really made the process much easier.

Once the temperature reached 235 degrees, I immediately removed the saucepan from the stove and put the entire pan in a bowl of icy, cold water. This brings the temperature down quickly.

Once the temperature reaches 100 degrees, remove it from the ice bath and start stirring it. The recipe I followed suggested using a wooden spoon. I decided to opt for a hand mixer. It still took 20 minutes of stirring. You'll know it's done when the syrup becomes lighter in color and is the consistency of peanut butter. You'll be tempted to give up, but stick with it!

My kitchen helper, Addy, took a few turns at mixing the syrup.

The finished product is delicious and can be used on pretty much anything. The maple cream will stay good in the refrigerator for a long time, since sugar is the only ingredient.

The finished product: Maple Cream

Maple Candy in Sugar Molds

This year I've been really excited to try making different products with our finished maple syrup. I have tried various times in the past, with little success. Historically, we haven't always produced enough syrup to justify "wasting" any on an unsuccessful recipe.

However, we have already produced 7 gallons of syrup this year and the forecast continues to look good for a long sap season. So, the girls and I decided to try making maple candy using sugar molds.

First, we boiled the finished maple syrup to a temperature of 240 degrees. I stirred it continuously while it was heating over the oven. It's best to use a sugar thermometer if you have one in order to be as accurate as possible.

Once the boiling syrup reaches 240 degrees, remove it from the heat and let it cool down to 175 degrees. Do not stir it during this time.

As soon as the syrup reaches 175 degrees, start whisking it until the syrup changes to a lighter color. This will only take a few minutes. The syrup will start to harden immediately. As quickly as possible, spoon the hot syrup into your sugar molds (or any container will work).

Let the sugar molds cool on a cooling rack until they can be removed easily from the molds. They should pop right out and be ready to eat! These make great little gifts for family, friends, and teachers!

Maple Syrup Candy - success!

Maple Candy on a Stick

The girls and I are avid readers of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, "Little House on the Prairie." In the first book, we read about how those early pioneers would drip hot syrup onto cold snow and enjoy a sugary treat.  So, of course, we had to try it!

First, we had the girls (and Cousin Alice) collect snow. We had them pile the snow into a foil caserole dish, but anything with ample surface space would work.

Next, I heated a half-cup of finished maple syrup in a sauce pan until it was boiling. Then, we used a spoon to drizzle ribbons of hot syrup across the cold snow in our caserole dish.

Drizzle the hot syrup in thin ribbons on to the cold snow.

Once the hot syrup made contact with the cold snow, it started to firm up quickly. We had the girls use kabob sticks to roll the cooling sap onto the end of the stick. This wasn't really a necessary step, but it made eating much less messy.

The last and final step is to eat your maple syrup candy! The kids enjoyed this activity and the delicious outcome. The syrup had a chewy, taffy-like consistency once it cooled on the stick. 

Addy and Caitlin enjoying their maple candy.

Maple Syrup Season Part 1

Full buckets of sap mean more syrup for us!

This spring has been great for maple syrup producers. We tapped our trees on February 15th.  This is one of the earliest starts we've had since we started making syrup 8 years ago. The weather has been perfect for good sap flow, which means we have had plenty of sap to turn into syrup!

Good Sap Conditions
Sap flows best when the nighttime temperatures drop below freezing and the daytime temperatures are in the 40's. All of this good temperature variation means that the sap is flowing and we are collecting gallons of good sap for boiling! We can leave our taps in and continue to collect it until the trees start to bud. This will happen as soon as the weather stays consistently warm. It's impossible to know how long a sap season will last. Some years, it's only a few weeks. Other years the sap season lasts for over a month.

Preparation
Before we can tap the trees, we have to clean out each of the buckets and boil each of the spiles. In addition, we have to clean out the sap collection barrels. Cleaning the buckets is tedious and time consuming. Each one needs to be scrubbed, cleaned, and rinsed. None of us enjoy washing buckets but it has to be done. This year, we cleaned all of our buckets. There were 36 in total.

Tapping the Trees
Once the conditions are right and the equipment is cleaned, it's time to tap the trees. This is always a fun day and we often get lots of family volunteers to help. Matt drills the hole and hammers in the spile. The girls hang the buckets and I place the lids on each one. It's always gratifying to hear sap dripping into a freshly hung bucket.

This year's group of volunteers!

Collecting the Sap

Once the sap starts flowing we collect the sap every day or two, as needed. We empty the sap from each bucket into a 58 gallon food-grade barrel that is strapped into the back of our Polaris Ranger. Some years, there is too much snow to drive the Ranger from tree to tree. Those years, we have to empty each bucket, one at a time. Thankfully, the snow has melted enough that we can use the Ranger to help with the work load!

Any visitors who come to our house in the Spring are subject to help collect sap!

Once the collection barrel is full, it's time to boil sap and make some syrup! I'll detail that process in a future blog post!

Signs of Spring

Finally, it's time to tap the trees!

Spring felt like it came a bit early this year and there are no complaints here! We had a glorious stretch of warm weather in February and it got us all excited to be outside again. It's always encouraging after a long winter to start to see signs of spring approaching.

Chickens
It's a sure sign that spring is coming when our chickens finally start laying eggs again. We averaged 4 per day throughout the winter. This is pretty depressing when you consider that we have 23 laying hens. So, it's always exciting when the egg basket starts to fill up again. The girls get very excited every evening to give us the daily tally of eggs that have been collected. We are getting 12-15 every day now.

Our flock of chickens have started laying again!

Warm weather also means that the chicken coop has thawed out enough to finally clean it out. The girls are always happy when their home has fresh pine shavings!

A spring thaw allows for a coop clean-out.

Maple Syrup
Once the daily temperatures start to be above freezing, while the nighttime temperature stay below freezing, it's the perfect time to tap our Sugar Maple Trees. We have a modest number of Sugar Maple Trees on our property but it's enough to make it worth our while to tap them and make syrup. Tapping the trees is always a fun day for our family. The kids enjoy hanging the buckets and watching the spile for any drips of sap.

Caitlin and Addy hanging sap buckets.

Seeds
Mid-February means it's time to plant my pepper seeds. This year, I am using seeds that I saved from our vegetable garden last year. It's my first time using our own seeds and I'm hopeful that they will sprout.  We have one big, south-facing window in our home and I cram it full seed trays to get a head start on the garden.

Seed packets filled with seeds we saved from last year's pepper harvest.

Honey Bees
This spring we have decided to take on a new endeavor.  We are going to add bee hives to our ever-expanding list of hobbies.  I honestly don't know anything about what it takes to raise bees, so I've enrolled in "bee school" with our local bee club. Matt and I have been spending our spare time researching all we can in preparation for our two new hives. I'll be blogging more about this experience if you are interested in learning with me!