Maple Taffy

February 1, 2014 by Hilda 34 Comments

This post is for blog event organized by The Novice Gardener. Bloggers are invited to submit a post showing how they celebrate Friday with some fun, fiesta-like activity. Surrounded by all this beautiful snow, I am certainly in a fiesta mood. As a forager, I can’t help looking at all this snow-buried landscape and wondering ‘what can I do with this while it lasts?’ So I am making a special treat with snow and maple syrup.

The Driveway

This is hardly a new recipe. I have seen it made and eaten many times, usually during the maple sap season and as part of the maple syrup production at a sugar shack. I have never tried it, so this seems a perfect opportunity to see if I can do it myself, and have some fun at the same time. The maple syrup is local – not from my property. The foraged ingredient is the snow!

To make this taffy, fill a cookie sheet with clean snow and keep cold. Boil some syrup until it reaches 235-245 degrees F, or the hard ball stage. Pour it in strips over the snow, and roll a popsicle stick or other similar utensil over the strip, rolling the maple around the stick as you go.

For a little variety, and to cut the sweetness to some degree, I added chopped salted peanuts.

Maple Syrup Taffy with Peanuts