“To make MAPLE TAFFY – a popular sweet in CANADA – you pour BOILING maple syrup onto fresh SNOW, then eat it with a wooden stick.”

National Geographic 5,000 Awesome Facts, fact # 10 on 35 of decadent desserts

Maple taffy was originally an Indigenous tradition that was adopted by French settlers in Eastern Canada, specifically Quebec, where maple trees grow in abundance.

“Tire sur la neiger” is the name of maple taffy in French.

Native Americans most likely discovered “sapsicles” which were where icicles of frozen maple sap formed from the end of a broken twig in winter time.

But to make this delicious dessert, it is necessary to make the maple syrup that makes up maple taffy.

To make maple taffy, you begin by boiling the maple sap collected by tapping maple trees, which means collecting a lot of sap because the syrup is made at a 40-1 ration. Forty gallons of sap makes about one gallon of maple syrup.(https://modernfarmer.com/2022/02/maple-taffy/)

First, to collect the sap from a maple tree, you need to gather supplies, which include spouts (spiles), a drill, a hammer, plastic tubing, and some collection containers.

Go to the maple tree and drill a hole. Usually a maple tree has to be 40 years old to be tapped successfully.

Insert a spile and tap gently with a hammer, and attach a container to collect the sap. It is then to be filtered, using a cheesecloth that can usually be used 3-4 times before switching to an orlon filter, which is the main base filter used for hot syrup. (https://www.smokylakemaple.com/product/8-qt-orlon-cone-filter-bag/)

After the filtration of the maple syrup, the next step is to heat up the syrup to the right temperature.

Catching the syrup at the right temperature is the trick, and then begin cooling it down a little before pouring the liquid into a snow mold. If it is caught at just the right temperature, the syrup won’t melt right through it, but it will catch on the snow, which in turn can be rolled up onto a spoon or a Popsicle stick. https://modernfarmer.com/2022/02/maple-taffy/ Turning it into a taffy.

The best time to get maple syrup from trees is usually after February when the temperatures are above freezing, making it easier to extract the sap from the tree.

It brings appreciation to the amount of work going into maple taffy.