Tire d'érable (maple taffy on snow)

As tradition built it

Tire d'érable (maple taffy on snow)

Makes about 25 sticks. About 15 minutes.

Ingredients

• 540 ml (one 19 oz can) pure maple syrup
• as needed snow, packed into a flat tray or individual dishes

Method

1. Boil pure maple syrup in a heavy-bottomed pot to a target temperature of roughly 114 to 120°C (238 to 248°F), well beyond the point at which it would set as syrup but short of maple butter or sugar.
2. Pack snow into a flat tray or individual dishes and smooth to a clean, cold, even surface beforehand.
3. The moment the syrup reaches temperature, remove from the heat and pour in thin ribbons directly onto the packed snow.
4. After roughly ten to twenty seconds, as it firms on contact with the cold, roll it up onto a wooden stick, a popsicle-style stick or a flat wooden spatula, and eat immediately, soft, pliable and warm against the cold snow underneath.

What a modern chef changes

Probe-held temperature, dehydrator-made fine snow, fresh maple sugar dust

Method

1. Hold the syrup at the target temperature with a probe thermometer rather than judging it by eye, the one genuinely reliable improvement over a tradition whose only real risk is a few degrees either side of the correct window turning a pliable taffy into either a soft failure or a hard, sugared snap.
2. Use a dehydrator to produce a genuinely fine, dry snow substitute, crushed ice blitzed and refrozen into a finer crystal than most UK gardens can offer even in a hard winter, for a more even, controllable set than variable natural snow gives.
3. Dust the finished taffy very lightly with maple sugar ground fresh in the spice grinder just before serving, the same syrup taken one step further along its own crystallisation curve, for a faint crunch against the soft taffy beneath.