Maple Recipes

Collingwood Muffins

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Sift together:

• 2 cups flour
• ¼ cup sugar
• 3 ½ tsp. baking powder
• ½ tsp. salt

Combine and add to above:

• 1 beaten egg
• 1 cp milk
• ¼ cup vegetable oil

Stir-but batter should be lumpy.

Fill greased muffin tins 1/3 full. Top with 1 tsp. maple butter. Fill tin to 2/3 full, using more batter on top of maple butter. Bake 25 minutes. Serve hot.

Mincemeat Variation

• 1 ½ lbs. boiled bottom of round-chopped
• Chopped apples-3 times more than meat
• Skins, chopped fine of 2 oranges
• Juice of two lemons and 4 oranges
• ¾ lb. chopped citron
• 3 Tbsp. salt
• 1 pkg. each of currants and seedless raisins
• 2 Tbsp. cinnamon
• 1 quart of cider
• 1 Tbsp. each of nutmeg, clove and ginger
• 2 cups maple syrup

Combine chopped meat and apples. Add juice of lemons and oranges, chopped orange skins, citron, raisins, currants, spices, salt, and cider. Mix well and add maple syrup.

Simmer in large pot until apples are soft.

A variation is to add brandy to the mincemeat mixture before storing.

Keene Pie

Make your favourite pastry for a two- crust pie.

Slice apples very fine and fill pan. Sprinkle generously with maple sugar. Cover with tree or four very thin slices of salt pork [I had difficulty believing this too!] cover with top crust. Bake about 40 minutes at 350 degrees F.

A variation is to lightly butter [or use lard or shortening] top of crust and sprinkle with flour, but lightly wash off excess flour, giving crust a flaky look. [yes, it sounds weird, but when I received this recipe, I tried it to be sure it wasn’t a joke. It is super!]

Spring DelightBeat 3 egg whites until stiff. Cook ¾ cup maple syrup until it threads. Combine with egg whites and continue to beat. Fold in whipped cream-amount depends on how you intend to serve this. I usually use 1 ½ to 2 cups whipped cream.

Sunday Topping

Using double boiler, combine and cook 2 Tbsp. sugar, 1 egg white, 1 cup maple syrup, salt and ½ tsp. cream of tartar, over boiling water. When beaten stiff, frost top and sides of cake. Cover top with slivers of toasted almond.

Story is told of Indians at Pidgeon Lake hiring iron kettles in 1835.

As soon as the sap begins to rise, the squaws betake themselves in families…to maple groves or sugar bushes…There they erect a camp, and prepare troughs and firewood and collect all the kettles they can borrow of hire…they begin to tap the trees with a tomahawk…the younger ladies…collect the sap and bring it to the fire…the most experienced… [regulates] the heat.

Maple Tapioca Pudding

Soak a ¼ cup tapioca in 1 cup milk overnight. Combine with 3 cups milk and scald.

Combine and add to hot milk mixture:

• 4 Tbsp. cornmeal
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. each ginger and salt
• ½ tsp. cinnamon

When mixture begins to thicken, place in buttered baking pan. Bake at 325 degrees F. about 1 hour. Remove and stir in about 1 cup of half and half milk/cream. Reduce oven to 275 degrees and bake about 2 more hours.

Sprinkle with chocolate or serve with hard sauce.

Pure maple syrup is North America’s gift to the world of gourmet dining.

The province of Quebec, Canada id the largest producer of maple products in the world.

Maple Hints

• Add some maple syrup to mashed turnip, along with butter and seasoning.
• Add 2 Tbsp. maple syrup to a glass of cold milk. Shake well.
• Add maple syrup to commercial marshmallow cream for a special sundae sauce.
• Add 2 Tbsp. maple syrup with salt and pepper to cavity of baked acorn squash.

Parfait au Sirop D’Erable-[looks good tastes good]

• 1 cup maple syrup
• 3 egg yolks
• 3 egg whites
• 2 cups whipped cream
• sliced strawberries [raspberries or blueberries left whole]
• White rum

Heat maple syrup in double boiler. Beat egg yolks well and add to syrup-slowly-stirring constantly. When slightly thickened, cool. Beat egg whites until stiff, add whipped cream. Place in a soufflé dish and refrigerate several ours. Garnish with berries and sprinkle well with white rum.

Turkey hill Erabliere,

Brome. Quebec.

Sugar Party-[for 24-34 people]

• 1 gallon pure maple syrup
• 1 bushel of clean snow-from under new fallen snow*
• 3 dozen unsweetened doughnuts, preferably raised
• 1 quart of sour pickles and delived eggs, milk, coffee, etc.

* No snow? Buy shaved ice. Snow will keep unmelted for hours in a sealed carton.

Maple Sugar Fudge

• 2 cups maple sugar
• ½ pint cream

Combine in saucepan and boil to 240 degrees F. [soft ball in cool water]. Remove and cool to lukewarm. Beat until mixture’s appearance is dull-not glossy. Pour into buttered pan-8″ x 4″ loaf pan-and cut before fudge hardens.

Mapleton Baked Beans

• 2 cups dry beans
• 6 cups water
• 3 inches stick cinnamon
• 1 ½ tsp. salt
• 1/3 cup maple sugar [or dark brown]
• ¼ cup vinegar
• 4 Tbsp. maple syrup

Wash and dry the beans. Cover with cold water, bring to boil and simmer about 4 minutes. Cover, remove from heat about 1 hour. Add cinnamon and salt.

Cover and simmer 2 hours, or until tender, adding water if necessary.

Stir in the maple sugar and vinegar. Remove cover and cook about a half hour. Add maple syrup.

Grand-Peres-[dumplings cooked in maple syrup]

• 2 cups maple syrup
• ¼ cup milk
• 1 ½ cups flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 ½ Tbsp. butter
• ½ cup water

Combine dry ingredients and cut in butter, then add the milk. Stir well. Add water to the maple syrup and bring to a boil in a deep pot. Drop batter in syrup-as large as you wish-then cover, turn down heat slightly and simmer. Dumplings usually take 15 minutes, depending on size. They should be dry inside. Before serving, cool slightly.

There are many versions of the Grand-Peres because in French Canada, the fin becs [gourmets] are everywhere. Some of the best food in the world comes out of the French Canadian tradition.

Sap quality is affected by weather, shallow tap holes, poor crowns, dirty equipment, careless collecting.

Sap quality is also affected by careless boiling methods and poor stand management.

Johnnycakes with Maple

• 2 cups cornmeal
• 2 Tbsp. maple sugar
• 2 tsp. salt
• 2 cups cold milk

Combine and stir until all lumps are gone. Grease pan with butter or bacon fat. When hot, pour the mixture, a tablespoon at a time and cook until edges are crusty. Turn quickly. Keep griddle well greased and hot.

Serve the cakes hot with maple syrup that has been heated, but not boiled.

Robert Frost described his farm in Franconia, N. H. as “backed up to the foot of Sugar Hill”

Sherbrooke Sherbet

• 2 cups maple syrup
• ½ pint cream
• yolks of 2 eggs, beaten until fluffy
• Finely chopped almonds

Boil syrup at high speed for about 5-7 minutes. Beat in the fluffy egg yolks. Add the cream, still beating the mixture. Add the almonds. Chill. Then freeze overnight.

“Captain Shaw has given me a tea chest in bird’s eye maple. It is beautiful wood, the colour of satten wood”

Dairy of Lady Simcoe

26th April, 1793

Maple Syrup Fudge

• 2 cups maple syrup
• 4 Tbsp. butter

Combine in large saucepan and boil to 234 degrees F. [should hold together when dropped into tap water]. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Beat until mixture begins to lose its gloss. Pour into buttered 8″ x 4″ loaf pan. Before completely hard, cut into squares.

Jean and Leslie Grue in Bass River N.S. tell a story that is repeated throughout the Sugar land of N. S.. Most of their syrup is sold to friends and at the Glooscap Co. Bazaar in Economy, N. S. and within the family. Jean recalls 65 years ago when her father would whittle wooden spiles in the long winter evenings. They make wax, cream sugar and maple butter. They, too, put a piece of pork rind over the boiling syrup so it would not run over.

Bass River Fudge

Bring to a boil, 2 cups of maple syrup, ¾ cup 10% cream or blend and 2 Tbsp. butter. Boil, uncovered until a drop in cold water forms a soft ball.

Cool, but do not stir. Then beat until creamy, turn into a buttered pan. Cut in squares.

“Sucre d’erable ” [maple sugar] in France is synonymous with Canada. The sugar maple cannot adapt itself to foreign surroundings and remain productive.

Marius Barbeau

March- the sweet seasonal gap, when winter and summer overlap.

Maron Fudge

• 2 cups sugar
• 2 ½ cups maple syrup
• 1-14 ½ oz. can evaporated milk
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup broken nuts
• 1-12 oz. pkg. semisweet chocolate
• 7 0z. jar marshmallow cream
• 1 tsp. vanilla [or maple flavouring]

Combine sugar, syrup, milk and butter in 3 qt. saucepan. Cook slowly to soft ball stage. Remove from heat, adding the chocolate pieces, marshmallow cream, nuts and flavouring. Beat well until blended. Pour into well buttered pan-13 x 9 2 inch. While still warm make squares and cut when cool and firm.

Erabliere Cookies

• 1 cup flour
• ½ cup maple syrup
• ½ cup butter
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 2/3 cup light brown sugar

Sift flour and nuts. Combine and bring to a boil, the maple syrup, butter and sugar. Stir constantly. Remove from heat and gently add flour and nuts.

Drop batter about 3 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet. Bake about 5 minutes. These should be lovely to look at and sweet, sweet to taste!

“Henries Squaw and family come from the Sugar Bush. They say the Maples give no more water.”

Diary

Connor 1804

Gage Publishing

Maple Refrigerator Cookies

• 1 cup shortening
• 1 egg, beaten
• ¾ cup brown sugar [or maple]
• 2 Tbsp. maple syrup
• 3 cups flour
• 1 ½ tsp. baking powder
• ½ tsp. salt

Cream shortening and sugar. Add beaten eggs, syrup, sifted flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix well. Shape into 2-2″ rolls. Wrap in waxed paper. Chill until firm. Slice 1/8″ thick. Place on greased baking sheet. Bake in hot oven-400 degrees F. for about 8 minutes.

“The Sumac has a large center of soft pith. It’s real pretty inside.”

Maple Crumb Pudding

 

Pour 2 cups hot milk over 1 cup soft bread crumbs.

When crumbs are very soft, add 1 slightly beaten egg or 2 egg yolks. To this add 1/3 tsp. salt 1/3 cup grated maple sugar.

Then add ½ cup broken walnuts and 1 ½ tsp. melted butter.

Put into greased baking dish, set dish in pan of hot water and bake at 325 degrees F. until set-so when a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Serve warm or cold with cream.

The sugar man wears many hats. He is weatherman and woodcutter, trailblazer and tree expert, transporter, pipe fitter, cook and chemist, demonstrator, processor, packager and retail merchant.

From brochure of the Pioneer Valley Association, Northampton, Mass.

Apricot Maple Soufflé

Put 3 Tbsp. apricot jam through a sieve, adding 1 generous Tbsp. maple syrup. Whisk 3 egg whites until very stiff. Mix gently. Bake in cool oven.

Serve at once.

When a crow caws on a hillside, it is spring. Winter is over…time to get the rusty spiles and sap buckets down from the beams in the woodshed. It is maple syrup time.

Then it is that the party lines go humming mad…Sap’s runnin’! Runnin’! Runnin’! It’s runnin’ good.

Some excerpts from Maple Sugar Making.

By Lawson smith, Nappan, Cumberland co. N. S.