Canadian · Dessert
Tire d'Érable sur la Neige
- Intermediate
- 20 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a sweet edge rounding the corners.
Ingredients
- 500 ml amber maple syrup, rich taste
- 1 tsp butter
- a tray of clean packed snow, or crushed ice frozen hard
- wooden sticks
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Pack the snow into a tray, press it flat and hard, and put it back outside or in the freezer until you need it; loose snow melts under the syrup and gives you sweet slush.
- Bring the syrup and butter to a boil in a pan at least four times as deep as the syrup, because it climbs violently near the finish.
- Cook to 113 to 115C (235 to 240F), or until a drop into cold water forms a ball that flattens between finger and thumb.
- Pour the syrup in long ribbons over the cold snow and count ten seconds, until the surface goes from shiny to dull.
- Catch one end with a stick and roll the ribbon up onto it, and eat it before it stiffens.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Tawny Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry or bourbon
- From the Taps
- Barleywine
- Zero-Proof
- Cold-brew coffee
Caramel echoing caramel: oxidative aging built the same flavors into the glass that the pan built into the plate.
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