• ½ cup shortening
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ½ cup whole wheat flour
• ½ cup mild flavoured molasses
• ½ cup hot water
• ¼ cups packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• ¾ tsp. baking powder
• ¾ tsp. ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp. ground ginger
• ¼ tsp. baking soda
• ¼ tsp. salt
• ½ cup chopped walnuts
• 1 recipe Maple Frosting

Preheat oven to 375ºF. Grease a 13×9x2 inch baking pan; set aside. In a medium mixing bowl beat shortening on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add the all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, the hot water, brown sugar, egg baking powder, cinnamon. Ginger, baking soda and salt. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Stir in walnuts.

Spread batter evenly in the prepared pan. Bale about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan in wire rack Spread Maple Frosting over cooled baked mixture. Cut into bars.

Maple Frosting

In a large mixing bowl beat 1/3 cup softened butter until fluffy. Slowly add 2 cups sifted powdered sugar, beating well. Beat in ¼ cup milk and ½ tsp. maple flavouring. Gradually beat in an additional 2 ½ cups sifted powdered sugar. Beat in a little additional milk if needed, to make a frosting of spreading consistency.

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 8oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened
• 2¼ cups all-purpose flour
• ¼ tsp. ground allspice or ground cinnamon
• 2 eggs
• ¾ cup packed brown sugar
• ¼ cup pure maple syrup
• ¾ cup mincemeat
• ½ cup canned whole, peeled chestnuts, drained and chopped, or canned candied chestnuts, drained and chopped
• powdered sugar [optional]
• cut-up candied cherries and dried apricots [optional]

Preheat oven to 375ºF. For pastry, in a large mixing bowl beat butter and cream cheese on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Stir in flour and allspice. Divide dough in half. Using one half of the dough, press a rounded teaspoon of dough evenly into bottom and up the sides of 24 ungreased 1¾ inch muffin cups. Wrap remaining dough in plastic wrap; chill until needed.

For filling, in a bowl beat eggs, brown sugar, and maple syrup until combined. Stir in mincemeat and chopped chestnuts. Spoon about one heaping teaspoonful into each pastry-lined muffin cup. Cover remaining filling with plastic wrap; chill until needed.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until pastry is golden and filling puffs. Cool lightly in pan. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool. Repeat with remaining pastry and filling.

If desired hold a fork over each cooled tart and sift powdered sugar through fork, making a stenciled design. If desired, top with pieces of candied cherry and dried apricot.

• 3½ cups whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• ½ cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup pure maple syrup
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
• 1 cup chopped pitted dates
• Raw sugar

In a medium bowl stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; set aside. In a large mixing bowl beat butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add brown sugar. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in maple syrup, eggs, and vanilla until combined [mixture will appear curdled]. Beat in as much of the flour mixture as you can with the mixer. Stir in any remaining flour mixture, the pecans, and dates. Cover and chill dough about 2 hours or until easy to handle.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a cookie sheet with foil or parchment paper; set aside. Shape dough into 1 inch balls. Roll balls in raw sugar to coat. Place balls 1 inch apart on prepared cookie sheet. Bake about 10 minutes or until edges are firm. Transfer to wire rack until cooled.

Nothing is more Canadian than the majectic sugar maple tree, inspiration for our national flag, painter of our glorious autumn landscape, source of excellent hardwood and producer of the sweet sap from which maple syrup is made.

History records that many “Maple Moons” before the coming of the white man, Mi’kmaq Indians living Nova Scotia on the island of Cape Breton used maple syrup and maple sugar as the main sweetener in their food.
 
Maple syrup and sugar were among the earliest agricultural crops in Canada and in fact was the standard sweetener in pioneer households until about 1875.

From birch bark containers and log troughs, to wooden buckets and iron to plastic pipelines and oil-fired evaporators,
syrup remains as it always has been, our first taste of springtime in Cape Breton… our sweet heritage.
 
Pure maple syrup has a unique and distinctive flavour that defies imitation. It may be used as a sweetener, a glaze, a sauce, a filling Of a frosting. When using maple syrup for its sweetness: 1 to ½ cups maple syrup = 1 cup other sugar (add ¼ teaspoon baking soda/cup maple syrup)

When using all maple syrup, reduce the other liquids in the recipe by one half. When using one half maple syrup. reduce the other liquids by one fourth.

Syrup may be sold by grade:

Canada #1 Extra Light,
Canada #1 Light,
Canada #1 Medium and
Canada #2 Amber - all grades meeting the standards set by Federal Government legislation.
Canada #2 Amber, as indicated by its amber colour, has the strongest maple flavour and is an excellent cooking grade. It gives that distinctive MAPLE flavour to any dish - a flavour not obtained when using a lighter grade of syrup.

Canada #2 Amber is recommended unless otherwise indicated.

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.

Maple Apple Fritters

Make a drop batter and beat,

• 1 Tbsp. maple syrup
• 1 1/3 cup flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1 egg, beaten]
• Pinch of salt

Slice, peel and core required number of apples. Make slices about ¼ inch thick. Dip each slice in the batter and drop into hot fat, as with doughnuts.

When lightly browned, remove to drain on heavy brown paper or several layers of paper towels. Serve at once with maple syrup drizzled over the top.

Often the sweet water, freezing in the trough at night, cracked it asunder and made it useless.

Edmond Savoie

Maple Syrup Brittle

• 2 cups maple syrup
• Dash salt
• 2 Tbsp. butter
• ¼ tsp. cream of tartar

Combine in saucepan and boil to 200 degrees F. To prevent sugar crystals, do not stir syrup. Pour into lightly greased 7″ x 7″ pan, being careful to avoid scrapings from saucepan. When firm enough, mark into squares. When cold, invert pan and tap gently on bottom to remove candy. Break into “brittle” squares.

“The Beauce is probably the best maple sugar district in Canada and undoubtedly has the best sugaring off parties.”

Glengarry Sweet Bread

• 2 ¼ cups flour
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• 1 ¼ tsp. salt
• ¾ tsp. baking powder
• 1/3 cup shortening
• 2 eggs, beaten
• ½ cup milk
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1 tsp. grated lemon peel

Grease and flour 3 loaf tins-or one 9 x 5 loaf pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine first five ingredients. Cut in shortening.

In a small bowl, combine beaten eggs, milk, syrup and lemon peel. Mix well. Stir the two mixtures together until flour is moistened. Spoon batter into pans. Bake until toothpick comes out dry. Cool on racks 10 minutes, then remove from pans and cool more.

Loaves can be frozen.

St. Ann’s Special

Toast six slices of whole wheat bread on top of stove-toast only one side. Butter the other side. Sprinkle over the butter-1 ½ cups maple sugar, crushed and rolled. Place on a cookie sheet under the broiler until sugar has melted.

The toasted maple is lovely served in a bowl with whipped cream.

“If the Indians that used to throw hot stones in a hollowed out log full of sp could see some of these contraptions [new equipment], they’d probably think white man has a clinker in his thinker.”

National Maple Digest

Sugar making was an aboriginal custom of the northeast Indians and so, it is to the Indian that we are “indebted for the important product of maple sugar”

Helen and Scott Nearing

The Maple Sugar Book

Weather controls Sugaring

Weather controls the Sap

“Sugar makers feel the sugar weather in their bones”

Nearing

“Many a farmer sits up all night boiling the sap… and a lonely vigil he has of it amid the silent trees”

John Burroughs

Signs and seasons, 1914

Butter Icing from Upstate-with Maple Syrup

• 6 Tbsp. butter
• 6 Tbsp. maple syrup
• 2 cups confectioner’s sugar
• ½ cup chopped nutmeats

Cream butter and beat into syrup. Add sugar gradually, beat until smooth. Will ice a double layer cake-sprinkle with nuts.

“Tall Tales” told by Lawson Smith, late of Cumberland County

“Sydney smith was tapping maple trees for A. c. Higgs. The boys, Howard McKay and Curtis Bacon, tapped a spruce tree and hung a can on it, and they said, “Sydney, Sydney did it” Sydney was indignant, he guessed he knew a maple tree from a spruce tree.”

“A slack period at Higg’s Sugar Woods, the men were splitting wood, Alex Smith [Robie’s grandfather] was running the evaporator, he stood in the doorway and told one fellow, “Lay on, lay on the beef” [work harder]. That fellow got even later, he brought in two or three tanks of “brook” water for sap. Alex said, “is, dis poorest sap I ever boiled”

From the sugar memoirs of Lawson Smith who lived in Nappan, N. S.

Tongue with Sweet-sour Sauce

• 4 lbs. beef tongue
• ½ cup vinegar
• ½ cup maple syrup
• ½ cup boiling water
• 1 chicken bouillon cube
• 2 tsp. whole cloves
• 2/3 cup seedless raisins
• 1 small lemon, thinly sliced

Boil tongue gently in salted water until tender, 3-4 hours. Drain. Remove skin and roots and place in baking pan. Combine remaining ingredients and pour over tongue. Bake at 375 degrees F. for 45 minutes, basting frequently. Remove meat to serving dish, slice it, and remove the cloves from sauce and spoon over slices. Serves 6-8.

From Maple Cooking, 1969, Beatrice Vaughan

Rep. by permission The Steven Greene Press, Brattleboro, Vermont

Sap Spiles are made from the Staghorn Sumac tree. Do not confuse this with the White Sumac, or “poison Sumac.”

Acadian Navets

Peel and slice about 1 ½ lbs. young turnip. Sauté in saucepan with about 2 Tbsp. butter. Sprinkle with 1 Tbsp. maple sugar. Cook until golden. Add ½ cup boiling water with 1 bouillon cube dissolved in it. Cook until tender.

The Cree called the sugar maple, Sisibaskwatattik [tree].

The Ojibway called maple sugar, Ninautik,[our own tree].

“When carefully made, this sugar is very sweet…and it is wholesome for the stomach. Its preparation, besides, involves almost no cost…But the people really do not make enough of for exportation, and in this they may be wrong. There are many other things in this country that are likewise neglected.”

Journad d’un Voyage

Charlevoix 1744

Maple Banana Eggnog

Peel one banana and cut into small pieces. Either with a beater or in a blender, combine with 1 egg, 2 Tbsp. maple syrup,1 cup cold milk. Makes 2 drinks-but makes you want 8!

A dear friend, Yolande Connors, who grew up in Quebec and is now living in Kingston, Ontario told me about cooking eggs in maple sap.

When she was a young girl, it was not uncommon to poach eggs in the ever-plentiful maple sap. Some people always boiled their eggs in the sap. I’ve not yet tried to poach eggs in the syrup!

The Maple family has more than a hundred species.

Maple Turkey Glaze

About one hour before turkey is cooked, remove from oven. Take bird from roasting pan and place on a heavy-duty foil lined shallow pan. Cover with 1 ½ cups maple syrup and return to oven. Cook about one hour more, basting about every 15 minutes.

Maple Filled Cookies

• 1 cup maple syrup
• 1 cup shortening
• 3 beaten eggs
• 1 ½ cups brown sugar
• 3 tsp. soda
• 2 tsp. cream of tartar
• 6 cups flour
• 1 Tbsp. vinegar
• 1 tsp. salt
• ½ tsp. allspice
• ½ tsp. cloves
• 1 tsp. cassia

Sift 5 cups of flour with spices and salt. Combine in another bowl, sugar maple syrup, eggs, and melted shortening. Ad soda and cream of tartar dissolved in the vinegar. Stir in the flour, salt and spices. Add remaining flour if needed to make medium stiff dough. Roll very thin and cut.

Filling;

Cook together until thick, 2 lbs. ground crackers, 2/3 cup water, 2/3 cup brown sugar, and 1 cup raisins

Add 1 Tbsp. butter and ½ tsp. maple extract or 1 Tbsp. maple syrup. Filling goes between two cookies on buttered sheet. Bake 12 minutes at 375 degrees F.

Maple Squash Muffins

• ½ cup maple syrup
• ¾ cup milk
• ¼ cup sugar
• 1 Tbsp. soft butter
• 2 ½ cups sifted flour
• Dash of salt
• 1 ½ tsp. baking powder
• 1 cup squash
• 1 tsp. cream of tartar
• ½ tsp.soda

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Combine dry ingredients, to which milk and soda are gently added. Mix squash, butter, sugar and syrup. Combine every thing and stir, but only until everything is equally damp. Butter a dozen muffin tins. Bake about 20 minutes.

[Zucchini can be substituted for the squash or even pumpkin]

Maple Meringues

• ½ cup maple sugar
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 Tbsp. milk
• 1 14 cups flour
• ½ tsp. baking powder
• ¼ cup citron, chopped fine
• ¼ cup candied ginger, chopped fine

Maple meringue

Cream sugar and butter. Stir in egg yolk and milk. Measure the flour and add floored citron and ginger to butter mixture. Add 1 cup- plus 2 Tbsp. butter and baking powder. Blend and chill.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. On lightly floured board, roll out dough to 1/8 inch thick. Cut out with your favourite cutter. Place about 1 inch apart on greased cookie sheet. Top with 1 tsp. maple meringue. Bake 10-12 minutes. Makes about 5 dozen sweets.

• Maple syrup is 64% carbohydrates compared to 100% in granulated sugar…
• 1 ½ lbs. maple syrup gives 10% of the daily amount of iron required by a physically active person…
• Maple syrup keeps indefinitely in a freezer. Keep open containers cold to better maintain the delicate maple flavor…
• If you wish to put your syrup into smaller containers, heat syrup to 180 degrees F. Fill hot sterilized jars-leave no air space. Seal and place in boiling water for ten minutes…
• 1 gallon of pure maple syrup weighs 11 pounds…
• Sugar content of sap averages 2.5% and sugar content of syrup is 66% or more…
• A maple tree is about 40 years old or more before it is tapped…

French toast with Maple

• 6 to 8 slices of bread
• 3 eggs
• ½ cup maple syrup
• 1 cup milk
• ¼ cup light cream salt
• Nutmeg

Beat eggs with maple syrup. Add milk, cram, salt, and nutmeg. Dip bread one slice at a time, than drain and fry in a hot buttered pan on both sides.

Maple Mousse

Heat 1 cup of maple syrup at low heat. Beat egg whites [2 eggs] until stiff. Add syrup to egg whites. Serve in small desserts dishes, garnish with flaked almonds, grated coconut, or nuts.

There are times when I still feel an alien to country life. But one of the best things about Cranberrie Cottage never changes. Each season, with its unique problems, I am again reminded how fortunate I am-securing a mailbox in cement by the highway; draining the pipes when the little house is alone and powerless in a winter storm; clearing the snow, pulling me out of the mud, or leaving a load of cow manure; bringing oil at dawn on a frozen Sunday; calling on the phone just to say she misses the lights in my house when I’m away… So many such things would fill another book.

My wine-making neighbor promises to help me clear brush around some old maples on the lot line. Then I’ll tap my first tree. Such fun!

John and his wife, Jessie, drink the sap as a refreshing tonic. But they use the sap to make Wine du Maple too. Here is a recipe to try some Indian spirits from maple nectar.

Algonquin Ambrosia

• 1 gallon maple sap [or water]
• 3 lemons
• ¼ gallon maple syrup
• 1 pkg. wine yeast
• ¼ tsp. grape tonnin
• Yeast nutrient

Peel lemons, remove pith, boil peel for 15 minutes. Strain, add water to 1 gallon. Add lemon juice, nutrient, tannin and maple syrup. When syrup dissolves, about 70 degrees F., add yeast. When fermentation slows-about 1 week-siphon into gallon carboy and airlock. When wine clears, rack into clean carboy and leave until all fermentation is finished.

Bottle-be patient-for at least three months!

Pain Perdu [French toast]

• 6 thick slices of French bread-[day old]
• 1 ¼ cup milk
• ½ cup maple syrup
• 2 eggs, beaten
• ½ tsp. vanilla
• Flour
• Clarified butter for frying
• Crumbled maple sugar or drizzle of maple syrup
• 2 tbsp. Grand Marnier [optional]

Heat milk slightly-do not boil-so maple syrup will blend well. Add vanilla and Grand Marnier. Soak bread in this mixture.

Now dip each slice into the beaten egg, then quickly into flour. Shake off excess flour and fry in butter until golden, slightly crisp on each side. Sprinkle with maple sugar or syrup and serve hot.

Annapolis Valley Special

Using double boiler, cook a ¼ cup rice with 2 cups of milk and ½ tsp. salt. Prepare 6 apples-pare, core and cut into halves crosswise. Cook apples until barely tender in 1 ¼ cup maple syrup mixed with 1 cup water.

Add rice and apples alternately with apples on top. If any syrup mixture remains, pour it over the top layer. Fill cavities of top apples with maple syrup and crushed nutmeats well mixed. Can be served with cream.

Writers have delighted in the imagery of the word “Sugar Off”. Archibald MacMechon [headwaters of Canadian Literature] wrote that one day on a Windsor stagecoach, Judge Thos. Chandler Haliburton overheard a fellow passenger talking to a country woman. She was talking about a Temperance speaker and she used the word “sugar off”. The story is that Haliburton got his material for his famous Sam Slick stories from just such moments and he quickly took out his notebook and jotted down the racy phrase.

Sugar-on-Snow

This is the heart of the famed “Sugaring Off” party

Boil the maple syrup. Most versions suggest 230-250 degrees F. on the candy thermometer, drop a tablespoon over some hard-packed fresh snow [usually the snow is served in small dishes or even plastic coated plates for a large party]. The maple syrup is transformed on contact with the cold snow. Suddenly before you is a waxy, sweet, chewy, taffy-like concoction, the like of which you can’t quite describe-but every year when the sap weather come, there is a yearning for one more taste of this-nature’s sweetest mystery.

Most recipes suggest old-fashioned pickles in brine as a side dish-and doughnuts.

Spicy Maple Bread [Recipe makes two loaves]

• 3 cups sifted pastry flour
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 egg
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 2 tsp. soda
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ tsp. salt
• ½ cup shortening
• 1 tsp. each cinnamon and ginger
• ½ tsp. each cloves and nutmeg

Mix flour, salt, soda, and spices.

Cream sugar and shortening adding maple syrup into which the beaten egg has been stirred. Gently stir in all dry ingredients, and slowly add the boiling water.

Butter and flour two pans and preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Bake about a half hour. Serve with a hard sauce or whipped cream topped with slivered almonds and sprinkled with nutmeg.

Broiled Curried Scallops

• 2 lbs. Scallops
• ¼ cup maple syrup
• ¼ cup prepared mustard
• 1 tsp. lemon juice
• 2 tsp. curry powder

Line broiler pan with foil and arrange scallops. Combine the syrup, mustard, lemon juice, and curry powder. Using half the mixture, brush scallops-broil at lowest level 10 minutes. Turn scallops, brush with remainder of mixture. Broil 10 minutes. Serves 5 or 6

Maple Spice Cookies

Sift together on waxed paper:

• 3 ½ cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. each baking soda and cinnamon
• ¼ tsp. gr. cloves and gr. Cardamom
• ¼ tsp. ground ginger

Beat well in a large bowl:

• 1 cup honey
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp. orange juice

Blend above into flour mixture. Add:

• 4 oz. finely chopped candied orange peel
• 1/3 cup finely chopped almonds

Dough should be stiff and sticky. Wrap in waxed paper. Chill overnight.

Divide dough into quarters. Roll out to 1/8 inch thick on floured board. Use a cookie cutter-about 2 ½ inch size. Keep about 1 inch apart on greased sheet. Bake at 400 degrees F. for about 8 minutes. Cool on racks.

While still hot, brush top with hot sugar glaze.

Turkey Hill Red Cabbage

• 1 red cabbage, medium size
• 1 ½ tbs. Salt
• ¼ tsp. pepper
• 1/8 tsp. nutmeg [freshly grated is preferable]
• 3 Tbsp. vinegar
• 2 large cooking apples
• 3 Tbsp. maple syrup

Quarter and core the washed cabbage. Cut into slender strips. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg and vinegar. Mix well. Place in well buttered casserole. Bake approximately 45 minutes at about 350 degrees F.-a moderate oven.

Peel, core and slice apples. Stir into the cabbage after adding the maple syrup. Cook about 30 minutes more. Serve from oven to table.

From Turkey Hill Erabliere, Brome, Que.

Baked Ham Slice

• 1 ham slice about 1 in. thick
• ½ cup granulated maple sugar
• 1 cup orange juice
• 1 tsp. cornstarch
• 1/8 tsp. ground ginger

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Combine maple sugar, cornstarch and ginger in shallow baking dish. Stir in orange juice. Add ham slice coating well on both sides. Bake 45-60 minutes basting with the sauce.

It is perhaps in the kitchen that one is most aware of the human past, for the kitchen…was the center of existence of the farm.

Henry Beston

Especially Maine

Parrsboro Pie

Begin with a one-crust shell using your own recipe. Do not bake.

• 2 cups maple syrup
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 cup flour
• ½ cup butter
• ½ tsp. soda

Pour syrup into shell after adding soda to it. Combine sugar, flour, and butter. Sprinkle over maple syrup. Bake ½ hour at 350 degrees F.

Maple Biscuit Roll

Use your favourite baking powder biscuit recipe. Roll into a thin dough, slice tart apples and spread over the dough. Roll and slice.

In a saucepan combine 2 cups of maple syrup, 1 Tbsp. butter, and 2 cups of hot water. Bring this to a boil. Add slices [you may want to put mixture in a baking dish] and cook at 400 degrees F. until golden brown. Serve with the hot sauce spread over the top.

Pasture land first reverts to berries, then such trees as ash, birch and poplar-then soft woods-then Maple.

Pour un soir d’hiver

Cotelettes de porc sauce aigre douce [or]

Sweet and Sour Pork Chops

• 4 thick pork chops
• ¾ cup tomato juice
• 1 Tbsp. vinegar
• ¼ cup maple syrup
• ½ tsp. dry mustard
• ¼ tsp. ground cloves
• Small bay leaf
• Salt and pepper

Brown chops in dab of fat. Add salt and pepper and place in 2 quart casserole. Combine remaining ingredients-bring to a boil. Pour over chops. Cover and bake at 360 degrees F. about 1-1 ½ hours.

It takes a pile of wood 8’x4’x4’ to boil 250 gallons of sap into 5 gallons of syrup. Another pile half as big is used to turn the syrup into hard brown sugar.

An efficient Sugar House should hold at least two cords of dry cordwood.

Vermont Rolls

• 2 Tbsp. shortening
• 1 cup scalded milk
• 1 Tbsp.sugar
• 1 yeast cake
• ½ tsp. salt
• 2 ½ cup flour

Mix and rise about an hour. Roll out on lightly floured board and sprinkle with broken pecans and dribbles of maple syrup. Dough should be about ½ inch thick. Roll dough and slice in about 1 inch pieces. Place each one in a muffin tin, on top of a few nuts and1 Tbsp. maple syrup. Let the dough rise and bake at 400 degrees F. for about 20 minutes.

Maple syrup is the first crop of the year.

Early spring is the sweetest-and the busiest-in sugar country.

Backwoods Roly-Poly

Prepare biscuit dough rolled out to ½ inch thickness. Brush with melted butter and top with peeled, cored, sliced apples mixed with maple syrup and nutmeg. Roll like a jellyroll. Place in shallow dish, cover and steam 1 ½ to 2 hours. Uncover, sprinkle lightly with grated maple sugar and serve plain, or with hard sauce.

The Quebec Maple Producers’ Cooperative formed in 1925, was 4,300 members. Syrup received at the Co-op; 1979 was 2,995`1980 was 3,407 1981 was 4,353.

Maple sugar making is an old art; the Indians were doing it when the white-man came to Canada. It is said the Indians discovered this accidentally when an Indian woman used sap from a maple tree to boil some meat. The meat was very sweet when cooked. This was the first maple syrup, all because she did not want to go to the brook for water and used sap instead.

In the early days all maples were tapped by an axe cut. Any break in the bark will allow the sap to run. Squirrels cut off the bud end of a limb to get the sap.

The storage or holding tanks were wooden tubs-”200-300 gallons”. One man who made these tubs was John Francis Smith, born [Nappan] 1835. He had a sugar woods in Fenwick.

“The horse and sled, with enough cans for that road, were breaking the sled road, while we were breaking the path for sap-gathering. The first two men with no load broke the path for the last man with the cans. This worked quite well if one of the first men didn’t wander off to find spruce gum.” “Some years the snow was too deep to walk through, we had to use snowshoes. That was a tricky job, little fir trees made a trap that would trip you up or should I say down?”

From 1917-1920, Lawson Smith rented a sugar bush of 500 trees.

“In 1910 I saw a load of maple cream from the Higgs woods that weighed a ton…cream was the leader…Higgs had a marble slab to use instead of snow for cooling the maple candy.” The slab was greased with the butter. Others used the slab too.

“The cream sugar had a method of its own. Cooked to about 238 degrees F. then cooled to ice-cold, warmed to loosen from the sides of the pot and beaten to turn white, Tricky, will set in pots sometimes before you can put it in the moulds.’

1910 prices:

Sugar and Candy: 15 cents a lb.

Syrup: $1.00 a gallon

Higgs Maple Cream: 20-25 cents a lb.

In pioneer days, powdered maple sugar was made.

“Ephraim Smith said that the Ripley Bros. of Fenwick, Cumberland Co., N. S. were still using birch bark containers in 1894 to catch sap in. A small birch bark container was used to hold maple candy [wax] that was first cooled by being spread on snow and then gathered up and broke in pieces.”

“To peel this birch bark was a big undertaking, the full moon in July was considered the best time…Also in July was a good time for black flies. They would be waiting for you by the dozens, with their aunts, uncles and cousins.”

“The sap was gathered in wooden tubs, placed on a sled, hauled off by horses or oxen.” Some had four of these tubs that held about 20 gallons each “or one big wooden tub that held about 100 gallons.’

In the early days the maple producers got a better return, more sap and sweeter. “The maple trees were in their prime-age and storms slow them up. One sleet storm alone set the trees back forever.”

“Like cows, some trees under the same conditions are better than others.”

“Boiling water or sap will scald, but boiling syrup will cook you because it has more heat. Even a splatter on hands or face will cause pain.” Thanks to Ernest and Coates of Nappan for making a copy of Lawson Smith’s sugar story and sending it to me. There are probably hundreds of untold stories of sugar bush happenings in Nova Scotia.

The Algonquin word for maple sugar is Sinzibuckwud, meaning “drawn from wood.”

Foamy Frosting

• 1 cup maple syrup
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 egg whites, beaten
• Slivered almonds

Cook sugar and syrup together until it forms a thread. Pour syrup slowly over egg whites. Beat until it will hold peaks. Gently fold in slivered almonds.

Ohio Baked Beans

• 2 cups yellow eye beans
• 2 tsp. salt
• ½ lb. salt pork with rind scored
• ½ tsp. soda
• ¼ tsp. dry mustard
• ½ cup maple syrup

Soak picked-over beans overnight, then boil about twenty minutes in salted water, adding soda to last 5 minutes. Drain.

Place half of salt pork in bottom of bean pot. Add beans with maple syrup and mustard. On top, place the other half of salt pork, scored rind up. Cover with boiling water. Bake about 6 hours, covered, at 325 degrees F. add water if necessary. Uncover and cook 1 more hour. Serves 6 huge helpings.

The sap of the maple can provide a “spirit”, but we hope this precious gift never be prostituted…to this ignoble purpose.

From The Maple Sugar Book

Helen and Scott Hearing,1950

Maple Orange Chop Sauce

Use your favourite stuffing for 6 pork chops. 1″ thick.

Sauté chops with butter over a low heat-about 6 minutes on each side. Add 1 cup maple syrup mixed with ½ cup of orange juice to skillet. Cover and simmer 20 minutes. Remove cover, cook 15 minutes more, basting frequently.

Some maple sugaring tricks are older than Canada…then there is finally-the clear, golden brown goodness, the essential sweetness of the micktan tree, the stuff the redmen believed to be “the blood of the Manitou, the great god of the forest.”

Kenneth MacNeill Wells

Moncton Mousse

• 1 envelope of unflavoured gelatin
• ¼ cup cold

water

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup maple syrup
• ½ pint whipped cream
• 1 Tbsp. grated chocolate

Soften gelatin in cold water for 5 minutes. Beat maple syrup and yolks in a double boiler. Cook and stir 10 minutes. Add gelatin. Cool, but do not set. Beat cream until peaked-add, with whipped cream, the maple syrup. Beat egg whites and fold into maple mixture. Refrigerate. Garnish with chocolate.

Maple Sunset

• 2 cups cranberry juice, chilled
• 2 cups light cream, chilled
• 1 cup maple syrup

Combine. Stir well to dissolve syrup. Chill well and serve over ice. Makes 4 generous mugs.

Linda Purdy of Collingwood, Cumberland Co. says that her earliest memories of Maple Syrup are “mostly sounds and sensations.” She would be about 5 years old,” carried on my father’s shoulders or riding on a bob sled.” She remembers the “slurp made by the horse’s hoofs as they were lifted out of the spring mud.”

The farmers say there is “no real money in it” but sugar making comes at a time when ordinary farm work is slack…the spring makes them restless and they want to get into the woods and see the sap running.

Maple Popcorn

• 2 cups sugar
• ½ cup maple syrup
• 1 ½ cups water
• 1 tsp. vinegar
• ½ tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. maple flavouring
• 5 quarts of popped corn

Butter the sides of a large saucepan. Combine sugar, salt, syrup, vinegar and water. Cook until hard-ball stage, and then stir in maple flavouring. Slowly pour mixture over the popped corn, mixing gently. Butter hands and shape into small balls.

More Sugar stories from Lawson Smith:

“My grandfather, John Smith, bet that he could put his hand down in a pot of boiling syrup. He did and won the bet. He greased his hand and arm with butter, and then cooled his arm in a snow bank. That’s how bets are won.”

“Dandy Gould of Upper Nappan was a peddler of maple candy. He sold it on the streets of Amherst weeks before the sugar season had started. He told that he had boiled all night in Fenwick that was the custom in sugar making.” It was Sunday and the good people would be going to church “so he rushed to get past the church ahead of them.” He put extra wood on the fire, got careless, hit a pot leg, and his syrup ran into the fire. He said, “I swore until the woods turned blue.” So he had no candy to sell that week.

The American Indians made birch bark containers holding about 20-30 lbs. of Maple Sugar.

Season for sugar-making came when the first crow appeared.

Usually each female Indian had her own sugar shack.

Water was made to boil by tossing hot stones in and out.

Maple Nuts

• 1 cup flour
• 2 cups rye meal
• 1/3 cup corn meal
• 1 egg
• Dash of salt
• ½ cup maple syrup
• 1 1/3 cup water
• 3 tsp. baking powder

Combine dry ingredients in bowl. Beat egg and add to maple syrup and 1 cup cold water. Mix all well.

Cut batter into small dabs and fry in hot fat. Cook to a maple brown-a mouth watering “doughnut” of maple sweetness.

Early colonists were urged to use maple sugar produced by men and women who were happy and free, rather than sugar from cane, provided by “wretched slaves.”

Maple Fog

• Scald 1 ½ cups milk in top of double boiler
• 2 eggs, separated
• 1 tbsp. gelatin
• ¼ cold water
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• ½ tsp. vanilla

Beat egg yolks, combine with a bit of hot milk. Blend with yolks, cook about 4 minutes.

Soak gelatin in cold water and then add to hot milk mixture.

Add maple syrup and salt, blend well. Chill. Gently fold in stiffly beaten egg whites and vanilla. Chill. Serve with Fluffy Sauce.

Cumberland Maple Pie

Prepare a baked pastry shell.

• 2 cups maple syrup
• 2 tbsp. flour
• ½ cup milk
• ½ cup light cream
• 1 Tbsp. butter

Mix maple syrup and flour in a saucepan, then add milk cream and butter. Stir gently over moderate heat and boil to 210 degrees F. cool, and then pour into shell. [for a change you can cover with a top crust]. Bake low in the oven at 375 degrees F. about 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.

Maple Cream Topping

• 1 cup whipping cream
• 1/2 cup maple syrup

Cream must be cold. Whip until it begins to thicken. Add syrup and beat until it retains its shape. Serve with cake, pudding or custard.

Rice Pudding

• 1 cup maple syrup
• 3 eggs
• 2 ½ cups boiled rice
• ½ tsp. salt
• 2 ½ cups milk
• ½ tsp. nutmeg
• 1 cup raisins

Combine. Place in buttered baking dish. Bake until firm [at about 325 degrees F.]. serve hot or cold, with or without cream. Serves 8.

New Hampshire Pudding

• 2 cups milk
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 3 tbsp. minute tapioca
• Dash of salt

Cook in double boiler for about 15 minutes. Add beaten yolk of 2 eggs. Then fold in beaten whites. Serve in sherbet glasses topped with 1 Tbsp. whipped cream. Serves 6.

Maple Eggnog

• 12 eggs, separated
• ½ cup bourbon
• ½ cup maple sugar
• ¾ cup rum
• 4 cups cold milk
• Ground nutmeg
• 2 cups whipping cream
• Dash salt

Beat egg yolks and gradually add maple sugar. Beat well. Add milk, bourbon, rum, and salt. Whip the cream. Beat egg whites until peaks are stiff.

Combine yolks, whites and whipped cream. Serve immediately in a large punch bowl, adding a few drops of maple flavouring just before serving.

“The fire is kept bright all day and night. Two women are detailed to watch the kettles closely; for when the sap boils nearly to syrup, it is liable to bubble over at any moment…they use a branch of hemlock and dip it in quickly settling the syrup for a while.”

Boston Baked Beans

• 1 quart parboiled red kidney beans
• 1 cup maple syrup
• ¼ lb. salt pork
• ¼ cup chili sauce
• 1 small onion
• 1/8 tsp. pepper
• ¼ tsp. dry mustard
• 1 tsp. ginger
• Dash of salt

Score salt pork and add to about half of the beans. Mix half of the maple syrup and the other ingredients and combine with all the beans in a bean crock. Cover with boiling water and bake at 300 degrees F. for 4 hours. Uncover, add rest of maple syrup and bake another hour, adding water if necessary.

Serves at least six helpings.

Peanut Butter Maple Fudge

• ½ cup maple syrup
• ½ cup milk
• 1 cup brown sugar
• ½ tsp. vanilla
• 1 cup white sugar
• Pinch of salt
• ¼ cup corn syrup
• ½ cup peanut butter

Combine and cook all except butter and vanilla on medium heat. Boil to 238 degrees F. on candy thermometer. Add peanut butter and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Pour into a buttered pan.

“A sap-run is the sweet goodbye of winter…the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.” J. Burroughs

“Three copious meals…are daily served up…maple molasses, Pease-pudding, gingerbread, and sour crout.” Canadian Scenery, I. Willis 1840

Algonquin Sausage

Cover a lb. link of skinless sausage with a small amount of water. Cook for 10 minutes at 325 degrees F. Remove from oven, pour maple syrup over the sausage. Cover sausage and bake until tender. Just before serving, remove cover and brown the meat.

Maple syrup adds to the taste of Polish sausage-cut into 2″ chunks and simmered in the syrup.

It takes 40 gallons of maple sap to produce just 1 gallon of the concentrated sweetness which is pure maple syrup. To provide enough heat to boil down that maple sap foe a gallon of syrup it takes a log of wood as big as a man, split, sawed and dried, of course.

Fox River Ham

Bake ham until about a half hour before done. Brush liberally with a mixture of orange marmalade and maple syrup. Experiment a bit with the amount of maple syrup. You might want to add some extra maple syrup on top of the mixture.

Puzzle: At what period and why was reference made to the “innocent maple”?

Answer: In the late 18th century there were strong voices against slavery. History and literature makes many such references. In an 1842 “History of Vermont” people were told the praises of Maple sugar-”it is never tinctured with the sweat, and the groans, and the tears, and the blood of the poor slave.”

Maple Blueberry Muffins

• 1/3 cup wheat germ
• ½ tsp. salt
• 1 ¾ cup flour
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup maple sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1 Tbsp. baking powder
• ¼ cup oil
• 1 ½ tsp. grated lemon rind
• 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Combine flour, wheat germ, sugar, baking powder, lemon rind, and salt. Blend thoroughly. Beat in small bowl, egg, oil, and milk. Add liquid ingredients to first mixture. Barely stir. Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin paper cups 2/3 full [grease well if muffin tin is used]. Bake a25 minutes at 400 degrees F. Sprinkle top of warm muffins with grated maple sugar.

“The harvest of sap suitable for maple syrup ends with the true buds.”

Sugar Bush Relish

Clean, core and chop about 6 lbs. of firm, tart apples.

Mix together:

• 1 lb. raisins
• 2 oranges, juice and grated rind
• 3 cups sugar
• 1 ¼ cups maple syrup

Cook slowly, about 1 hour, stirring frequently. About 5 minutes before removing from heat, add ½ lb. shelled, broken walnuts. Use at once or store in sterilized glasses.

Northfield Cookies

• 1 cup maple syrup
• ½ cup butter
• 1 tsp. soda
• 2 ¼ cups flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 ¾ tsp. baking powder
• 1 ½ tsp. maple flavoring

Bring syrup to a boil. Remove from heat. Add soda and butter. Blend remaining ingredients except maple flavoring and stir well. Chill slightly. Add flavoring. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Roll out paper thin dough using scant flour on board. Cut as desired. Bake on lightly greased sheet about 6 minutes. Watch! Do not bake too long.

Green is a comfortable color, the color of hops, the color of spring.

The early settlers called maple syrup “Indian molasses.”

The sugar maple is self supporting, self seeding, and self perpetuating. The maple syrup is claimed to have a mild delicacy of flavor-unequalled.

On the first night of “boiling” the sugar maker’s family will sit down around the kitchen table for a little well deserved rest and josh each other about their recent sap gathering experiences in the sugar bush. It doesn’t matter now that the sap had once frozen solid in the buckets and that a spooked deer had crashed through the new fangled pipe line, for here comes Mother setting out the sauce dishes full of the first taste of syrup, to be enjoyed of course, with a fresh batch of doughnuts. “By Gory, after all is said and done, sugaring is fun!”

The Mi’kmaq (also Míkmaq, Micmac, Migmaw; in Quebec, Canada, Mi’gmaq) are a Canadian First Nations people indigenous to northeastern New England, Canada’s Maritimes (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island), and the Gaspé Peninsula of the province of Quebec.

Because the Mi’kmaq are the indigenous people to northeastern North America and Maple trees are as well, the Mi’kmaq people are accredited as the first people to refine maple syrup.

MicMac Pudding (Mikmiq)

• 41/2 cups milk-6 Tbsp. cornmeal
• 3 Tbsp. all purpose flour-1 egg
• ½ cup each maple syrup and white sugar
• 2 tbsp. butter-1/2 tsp. salt

Scald 2 cups milk. Combine 1/ cup [cold] with cornmeal and flour. Add to scalded milk and cook until thick. Break egg into bowl and beat, add sugar, syrup, salt, 1 cup cold milk. Add to first mixture, and then add 1 cup cold milk. Put in pudding dish, dot with butter, bake at 300 degrees for 1 ½ - 2 hrs. Fresh fruit can be added. Serve hot or cold with cream.

French Canadian Custard

• 2 cups milk-3 egg yolks
• 1/3 cup maple syrup-1 tsp. vanilla

Lightly beat egg yolks, add syrup and dash of salt. Stir into scalded milk. Cook in double boiler until mixture adheres to the spoon. Add vanilla. Chill well before serving.

Creamy Maple

• 3 cups brown sugar-1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1/3 cup cold milk=2 Tbsp. butter-salt
• ½ tsp. each nutmeats and vanilla

Combine all except nuts and vanilla. Stir gently on low heat until dissolved. Do not stir but boil to soft ball stage. Cool. Beat until thick and creamy. Add flavoring and nuts. Grease pan and cut before mixture hardens.

Maritime Topping

• 6 large marshmallows
• 1 egg white-dash of salt
• ½ cup maple syrup

Cut marshmallows into small quarters. Beat egg white until slightly stiff. Bring syrup to boil, then add marshmallows and salt and blend well. Pour over egg white and beat until well blended. Chill. Versatile. Pour over desserts, cakes, pudding, and ice cream. Makes 1 ½ cups.

Maple Apple Sauce

Cover with boiling water, 4 large apples, pared, cored and cut into quarters. Add 2 whole cloves. Cook until done and put through a sieve. Return to heat, adding 1 Tbsp. vinegar and ¾ cup of maple syrup. Cook about 10 minutes. Beat in 1 tsp. butter. Can be served hot or cold. It is especially good with roast pork.

• New England Gingerbread
• ¾ cup maple syrup-1/2 cup butter
• ½ cup brown sugar-1/4 cup milk
• 1 tsp. each of soda and ginger
• 2 cups sifted flour- 1 Tbsp. water

Sift ginger and flour. Add soda to the tablespoon of warm water. Beat egg, add sugar and butter. Add soda water to the maple syrup and stir into the egg mixture, Add milk. Stir in flour until well mixed. Bake in buttered pan at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes.

“Blessed of the Lord be his land…for the precious things put forth by the moon, and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills.”

Deuteronomy33:14.15

” N.S. produced 57,700 litres of Maple syrup in 1981-42,700 was from Cumberland Co.”

Down East Cracker Pie

• Roll out about ¾ cup crackers fine
• 1 cup maple syrup-1 cup water
• ½ cup each-butter, vinegar, white sugar
• Raisins and assorted spices

Combine in a saucepan and cook a few minutes. Then bake in a two crust pie, Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, reduce to 350 and bake for 20 or 30 minutes more. Makes 2 pies.

“Sugar was a regular part of the diet by early 1800’s because the tea and coffee habit had started.”

North Country Cookies

• 1 cup maple sugar-3 ½ cup flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder-1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs -1/4 tsp. salt

Cream sugar and butter, add eggs and beat. Add dry ingredients. Roll, chill and slice. Bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes.

Maple Chiffon Pie

• 1 pkg. unflavored gelatin
• 1cup boiling water
• ¾ cup maple syrup
• 2 tsp. grated lemon rind
• 4 egg whites, stiff1 baked pie shell
• or graham cracker crust

Dissolve gelatin in water and stir. Add maple syrup and lemon rind. Cool. Beat egg whites until stiff and fold the two mixtures together, continuing to beat until fluffy. Turn into pie shell. Chill.

“The wood roads were heavy with mud, with here and there patches of old snow: scarcely a sign of spring except the running sap and the swelling buds.”

Maple Fruit Blossoms

• 1 cup maple syrup-2egg whites
• 1/3 cup seedless raisins
• 1/3 cup candied lemon peel
• 1/3 cup chopped figs [optional]
• 1 cup broken walnuts

Measure syrup into large saucepan. Boil to 254 degrees-until soft ball forms when dropped into cold water. Beat egg whites until stiff. Add syrup slowly. Beat until mixture peaks. Fold in fruit and nuts. Drop by teaspoonful about 1 inch apart on waxed paper and leave overnight. [or use lightly greased baking sheet] Bake in very slow oven [200 degrees] for 1 hour. Makes about 36 meringues.

“The sound of the whip-or-will was a harbinger of spring and a warning that the time to cease sugar-making had arrived.

Eliz. Therese Baird

Greywood Fudge

• 2 cup each maple syrup and white sugar
• 1 cup raisins-1 cup of nutmeats
• 2 egg whites, stiffly beaten

Boil syrup and sugar until it forms a thread. Gently add to the beaten egg whites. Continue to neat, adding raisins and nuts. Cool in a pan and cut into small squares.

Canadian Cake

Combined, softened, ½ shortening with 1 cup of maple syrup. Add to this, 1 cup of unsweetened thick applesauce. Thoroughly flour 1 cup raisins. Mix together 2 cups of sifted flour-1/2 tsp. salt, ½ tsp. each cinnamon and cloves, ¼ tsp. nutmeg and 1 tsp, soda. Gradually add dry mixture to first mixture, and then fold in the floured raisins. This makes a stiff batter. Just before baking, sprinkle with grated maple sugar. Bake ¾ to 1 hour.

“Marc Lescarbot said that if the Indians “are pressed by thirst, they get juice from trees and distill a very sweet and agreeable liquid, which I have tasted several times.”

Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 1609

Spring Tonic

• ¼ cup maple syrup-1/4 cup lime juice
• 1 cup light rum-1 cup ginger ale

Combine and stir well. Use a shaker or blend well. Pour over crushed ice to serve. Makes 4 drinks.

“The first run, [of sap] like first love, is always the best, always the fullest, always the sweetest”

John Burrows - Winter sunshine 1881

“In early 1848, nearly four million pounds of maple sugar was manufactured in Upper Canada”

Weekly Globe, 16 Nov. 1849 - Gage Publishing

Maple Tea

[Serve hot or cold ]

• 6 cups orange-spiced tea, strong
• 1 cup maple syrup - ½ cup orange juice
• ¼ cup lemon juice

Combine; stir well to dissolve the maple syrup. Chill well before serving. T o serve hot, it is best to heat in a double boiler so it will not boil. [Should it boil, it will take on a bitter taste]. Makes about 7 mugs.

Quebec Whipped Cream

• ¾ cup whipping cream
• ¼ cup maple syrup

Thoroughly cream and the syrup. Then beat cream until it begins to thicken. Add syrup, a small amount at a time, beating constantly, until stiff peaks form. Makes about 2 cups. Use as a topping or filling - the possibilities are endless - The effect is fantastic.

Detroit Spareribs

• 3 lb. spareribs - 1 cup maple syrup
• 1 Tbsp. each Worcestershire sauce, chili sauce and vinegar
• 1 small onion, finely chopped - salt
• ¼ tsp. dry mustard - 1/8 tsp. pepper

Roast ribs on a rack at 425 degrees for 30 minutes. Drain fat from pan. Cut ribs into serving’s pieces. Place in a 9 x 13 inch pan. Combine remaining ingredients in saucepan. Boil 5 minutes. Pour over ribs in pan. Bake, uncovered, at 375 degrees for1 hour. Baste and turn ribs over after 1 hour. To serve, skim fat off remaining sauce and serve with ribs. 4 servings.

“Classical fare for any blizzard night is pancakes drenched in pure maple syrup.”

“…. Of the country, there are others that are not neglected. Timber, staves. Hoops, shingles, oar rafters and handspikes, are, according to local conveniences, prepared during the leisure of the winter, and sold to coasting traders in the spring. The wood, the lakes, the rivers, contain food of different descriptions, If the moose, deer, and rabbit, the salmon and the trout, the gaspereaux, herring and shad, supply the wants and necessities of the wandering tribe of Indians, without one artificial product of the land, it must be acknowledged that it is not the fault of the country, if a settler cannot make a comfortable living, who, besides these advantages, possesses the means of cultivating a luxuriant soil. To the new settler the sugar maple tree is very valuable. In the early part of the spring of the year, when the sap first rises, the tree is tapped, and a certain quality of the sap or juice is drawn off, which is then boiled down, and manufactured into sugar. In some parts of the country large quantities are made, and in most of the families on new farms, a sufficiency for their own consumption. The process is attended with very little labor, and one tree will yield annually from five to eight pounds. In the United States, they know better how to appreciate the advantage of this tree than the inhabitants of Nova Scotia. Some years ago, in towns in Vermont, containing no more than forty families, 13,000 weight of maple sugar were made. In some parts of that State the inhabitants are starting to line the roads with maple trees, and it would certainly be very advantageous to Nova Scotia, if its farmers would adopt the same practice. The granulation of the sugar is easily performed and the quality, color, and flavor of it, when well made, is equal to any sugar manufactured in the West Indies,

Courtesy of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia

Thomas Chandler Haliburton - A General Description of Nova Scotia [Halifax.1825]

Sugar Glaze

Thoroughly mix together ½ cup sugar, ½ cup of maple syrup, and about ¼ cup water in a small saucepan. Quickly bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer about 3 minutes.

Beat into the mixture 1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar until smooth. Spread while hot. [If glaze is used on cakes or squares, store them in layers separated by waxed paper. They will keep for two or three weeks in a tightly sealed container.].

Note: ¾ cup of maple syrup equals 1 cup maple sugar. If substituting reduce liquid by 3 Tbsp. for each cup of syrup used.

“…An ancient wooden shack among magnificent old Maple trees…the steam from the boiling sap was pouring out through every crack.”

“When maple syrup is cooked to candy - [the sugaring-off] - the French in Canada call this la tire, or the pull. They pull the candy into ropes before it gets hard.”

Michigan Maple Pie

Make a 9 inch pie shell of your favorite pastry.

Gently heat 1 ½ cups maple syrup until ½ tsp. soda is dissolved. Do not bring to a boil. When it is cooled, pour into the pastry shell.

Combine 1 cup of sifted flour, 1 cup of brown sugar, ¼ butter.

When well blended, spread over top of maple syrup. Bake about 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Put a foil sheet underneath as it tends to boil over.

Maple Cornflakes

• ¾ cup maple syrup - ¼ cup butter
• ½ cup cornflakes - 4 Tbsp. cocoa
• 5 Tbsp. milk - vanilla

Melt butter and syrup; add milk, vanilla, and cocoa. Fold in cornflakes. Put in small heaps, do not bake.

Not; Maple butter should be tightly covered to prevent drying, or cover with a thin layer of water.

Loyalist Brown Bread

• ½ cup maple syrup - 1 cup corn meal
• 2 cups graham flour - 1 cup sour
• 1 tsp. soda - pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients. Bake in medium oven at 375 degrees for 1 hour. If batter is too heavy, add milk, a drop at a time. “The measure of a Sugar bush is not the number of trees, but the number of buckets that can be hung. [And wait until tree is mature].’

Cumberland County Cake

• Boil gently 1 ¼ cup maple syrup.
• Beat 2 egg whites well.
• Beat 2 egg yolks, add ½ tsp. vanilla
• Add yolks to maple syrup. Gently fold the two mixtures together.
• Sift together and fold into above mixture;
• 1 cup flour - 1/8 tsp. ground coriander
• 1 tsp. baking powder - dash of salt

I like to make this cake in a bundt pan. Bake about 1 hour at 325 degrees. Cool at least 1 hour on a rack, and then remove from pan. Top with sprinkled confectioner’s sugar or your favorite icing.

“Vermont was the first State in the Union to have a mandatory maple syrup grading law.”

Pictou Pudding

• 1 cup flour - 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 Tbsp. butter - 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. baking powder - ¾ cup milk
• 1 cup nut meats - 1 cup raisins
• dash of salt - maple syrup

Combine butter and sugar; slowly add milk and dry ingredients, alternately. Gently fold in nuts and raisins. Pour into greased 13 x 9 x 2 in. baking pan. Cover generously with maple syrup. Bake for 35 minutes at 375 degrees. Serve with whipped or plain cream.

“These trees are…rock or sugar maple, and in the back settlements have great value in furnishing a luxury which the young settlers would otherwise be unable to procure.”

Letters to Nova Scotia - Moorsom. 1830

Maple Butter Spread

• Use only first quality fresh syrup.

Heat syrup to above boiling point of water. Remove immediately. Pour boiling syrup to a depth of 1 ½ in. in a well chilled flat pan. Cool pan quickly to 50 degrees. With two wooden paddles, quite like those used for making creamery butter - about 3 in, wide - scrape the thick syrup from one to the other. Allow about 2 hours to produce the maple butter. Store in a cold place.

“The sugar maple is not found in Europe except as an ornament”

“Catherine Parr Trail objected to hanging fat over the boiling syrup, “a common plan but I think by no means a nice one.” - The Canadian Settler’s Guide, 1860.

Maple Icing

• ½ cup maple syrup - 1 egg white

Beat egg white well. Gradually add maple syrup, continue to beat until icing peaks. Should cover a 9 x 7 in. cake. Serve immediately or keep cool as icing is uncooked.

“Before 1790 maple sugar was rarely used as a staple along the St. Lawrence, except by the sugar makers. - - Maple Sugar, It’s Native Origin - Marius Barbeau.

Pineapple Maple Punch

• 3 qt. pineapple juice, unsweetened
• 1 ½ cups lemon juice - 1/3 cup lime juice
• 3 cups orange juice - 1 cup sugar
• 1 ½ cups maple syrup

Combine and chill. Mix thoroughly. When it’s time to serve pour over ice in punch bowl. Gently add 4 - 28 oz. bottles ginger ale and 2 - 28 oz. bottles carbonated water. Both should be pre-chilled. [Makes about 75 cups].

Maple Fried Sweets

• Heat fat for deep-frying, about 375 degrees.
• Beat together until stiff - 3 egg yolks - 1 egg - ½ tsp. salt
• Gently add, ¼ cup confectioner’s sugar - 1 ½ Tbsp. maple syrup.

Measure 1 cup flour and add all at once. Knead well on floured surface. Make into two, rolling each one out to nearly paper-thin. Cut into diamond shapes, cutting a slit in each one at one end. Draw tail of diamond through the slit, curling back in opposite direction. Fry in deep hot fat, turn quickly when lightly browned, about 30 seconds. Drain on toweling and sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar.

Maple Pfeffernusse

• ¾ cup light brown sugar - ½ cup butter
• 1 egg - ½ cup maple syrup
• 3 1/3 cups flour - ½ tsp. soda
• ¼ tsp. salt - ½ tsp. clove
• ½ tsp. cinnamon

Mix butter, sugar, egg, maple syrup and about 3 drops of anise oil mixed with 1 Tbsp, of hot water. Sift flour and blend dry ingredients. Knead dough gently until pliable for shaping. Mold into wee balls - 1 in. diameter - and bake about twelve minutes on a greased sheet. These cookies will harden so it is suggested that they be stored with a slice of apple.

Mix a Maple Special: Add at least 3 tsp. maple syrup to your favorite fizz, Bacardi, sour, old fashioned or any other drink. Maple Fried Apples

Cut cooking apples into ½ inch slices and fry in hot oil. When golden brown, turn and fry the other side. When tender drizzle with maple syrup and serve at once.

“…the 3rd generation of a family that has made sugar every spring for seventy years…he knows by trial with a ladle when the syrup ‘aprons off” or “hairs off’.

Maple Cinnamon Toast

Cream together enough butter and maple syrup to cover required number of slices. Spread on the toast and sprinkle with cinnamon. Serve immediately.

“We brought in pails and pans of snow to “sugar off’… by the steaming pans, there was mighty joking and story telling”.

Maple Sugaring

  From Nova Scotia to Minnesota the Sugar-on-Snow parties are the same but sugaring-off has become big business. For instance, in Vermont, you might read an invitation to:

Visit a Sugar Bush during March and April as guests of sugar makers who cater to Sugar parties… After the production season we are planning Summer Sugar-on-Snow parties, so come early, come late, but come, see “how she’s done” and have fun.

Some maple producers say “it’s awful hard work” to run a Sucrerie and money alone is not enough-a person has to love what he is doing. One writer insisted that “sugar making is not for the weak hearted or bodied” because it is one of the “most laborious occupations”. As more and more farms are sold and trees cut down or abandoned and family’s scattered and young people turned off the land, the old Sucreries are disappearing. Progress has taken a sweet toll. When Lawson Smith of Cumberland County, N. S., gave up making sugar he sold his equipment to other sugar makers.

“And the Nova Scotia government bought the land for a picnic park”. Smith’s grandfather “made sugar back of Stanley” and his three sons bought a 120 acre Sugar Woods in 1894. Ownership changed hands several times and finally in 1932, “the Department of Highways bought the whole lot when they made the highway to Springhill which is now paved”. Similar transactions and forest depletion have drastically influenced the character of the country and of the people who live there.

In 1925 a group of otherwise-thinking Maple Syrup producers in Quebec got together and formed a cooperative. They knew that the Sucrerie would disappear unless there was some guarantee of quality standards and a ready cash market. Many of the sap orchards were consolidated and today the cooperative has a membership of 4.300 producers. Quebec is the world leader in the production of Maple syrup and other maple products. The French Canadian cuisine is famous internationally for such voluptuous delicacies as maple mousse, soufflé, parfait, Tarte a la ferlouche, Pain Perdu or the once homely Grand Peres that are now served as a gastronomic delight. It is not surprising that about 40 percent [1,266,939 U.S. gallons] of the annual production of pure maple syrup is consumed within the Provinces, leaving 60 percent of the Quebec maple harvest to be exported to other markets.

This is a time of Maple Renaissance in Canada and the mood extends across the border. The industry is being rejuvenated and continual research and improvement of equipment and marketing skills. More family farms are being reborn as more young North Americans recognize and seek the dignity of a simple life, closer to nature. It may be true that some farmers say that “it’s the worse damn job there is” but when the sap weather winds begin to blow these same farmers can’t wait to head to the bush.

An introduction to the erable a sucre would not be complete without an acknowledgement to the North American Indian who shared the sweet secrets of the Sugar Bush with the early Jesuits and later colonists.

There are many legends, most of which vary only slightly, explaining how the Indian learned to harvest the liquid fruit of the Maple Tree and how he discovered the greater mystery of converting this sap to Maple Syrup. Between the recipes that follow are bits and pieces of the folklore and here are a few versions that have survived countless tellings.

The Chief took his tomahawk from the Sugar Maple tree where he had thrown it the night before. As the sun got higher, the sap began to drip from the gash in the tree. The Indian wife tasted it and it wasn’t bad so she used it to cook the meat. Or, the pot was left under a broken Sugar Maple branch and the sap dripped into it. Later when the meat was cooked, the sap boiled down to syrup. The irresistible sweet scent and the taste of the maple meat so delighted the chief that he named it “Sinzibuckwud”, the Algonquin word meaning “drawn from trees” and used by the Indian when referring to Maple Syrup.

Visitors to the Sugar Bush, especially those from the towns and cities, are often surprised to know that the Maple Syrup does not flow from the trees in its final thick sweet state. The Chippewas and the Ottawas of Michigan believe that many moons ago, the God NenawBozhoo loved his people and feared they would become indolent and destroy themselves if nature’s gifts were given too freely. Similarly, another story is that the Earth Mother, Nokomis, made the first Maple Syrup. She made a hole in the tree and the syrup poured out. Her grandson Manabush was worried. If the sweet gift of the Maple tree was so easily obtained the Indians might become shiftless and lazy. So he showered the top of the Sugar Maple with water, diluting the Maple Syrup into sap. Ever since then it has taken long hard labor to make Maple Syrup.

Marius Barbeau tells us that the Indian gradually reduced the sap to syrup by a series of freezing, discarding the ice and starting again. In the 16th century the Indians had only clay pots. They boiled meat and fish by constantly adding hot stones to the pot and replacing them with hotter ones. For two hundred years there was no significant change from the methods used by the early Indians. The French Canadians were not interested in the backwoods sugar until imports from France were cut of in the early 1700’s, forcing the colonists to be self sufficient. Similarly, no until the War for Independence in the late 1800th century, was sea traffic so blocked off, did the colonists consider the value of the crude Maple Sugar. By the end of the 18th century the maple industry was established in Quebec but mainly as a “typical habitant activity”. It was not until the end of the 19th century that iron or tin pots were used to gather and boil the sap, and not until the 20th century has the renaissance of the Sugar Maple industry been taken seriously.

As I write the introduction to the Sugar Bush Connection, it is early in February, but the winter sunshine seems warmer and the days longer. I fear that a false spring is upon me! Yet this, in itself, is a cue that winter will soon give up, disappearing in puffs of sweet smoke from the Sucreries. Maybe you too, respond to the season of the sap with its promise of sugar weather and sugar water-the rustic rites of a northeastern spring. Why not put the mood into action by making some Maple Magic in the kitchen? Or begin Maple Sugaring in your own backyard, or look for a few sugar trees in the field of a friendly neighbor. Better still, start a Sucrerie. It will mature in forty years and last at least another hundred and fifty-a living legacy of the most versatile luxury of nature. How sweet it is!