Maple sugar candy noms

I have loved maple sugar candy since I was tiny. Although many Canadians could say the same, it's not common in Australia and many people don't even know what it is - maple sugar candy is essentially 100% maple sugar, crystallised by a process of boiling and stirring, then moulded into a variety of shaped sweets, like maple leaves, little people or flowers.

When I was little, my mum, who is a world class shopper, somehow found and used to buy imported maple sugar figures. I often used to get them in my Christmas stocking and I adored the crisp sugary outer shell and the meltingly smooth, sweet maple-y centre. At some point in my childhood these wonderful sweets became unavailable, and as an adult I searched high and low for them without success.

My search for maple sugar candy became a kind of dismal epic - once, in a cruel twist of fate, I took a day off work just as a co-worker came back from a holiday in Canada. When I was back at work I discovered he had brought some maple sugar candies back with him but by the time I realised, they were all gone and only the empty box remained to taunt me.

It never occurred to me to try to make them - they seemed so exotic and, well, Canadian, and such a mythical product of my childhood that I couldn't imagine them being born in my pedestrian kitchen. HOWEVER, when playing on the interwebs recently I found a RECIPE for maple candy.

The recipe was a fairly simple affair which required some maple syrup, a saucepan, a sugar thermometer and some moulds. My last sugar thermometer died a while ago so on impulse today I decided to fly blind and boil up some syrup and see what happened.

I boiled the syrup for a few minutes and began testing for soft ball stage manually - in the absence of a sugar thermometer you can do it the old fashioned way, drop a small amount of mixture in iced water and see if it has enough firmness to form a soft 'ball' in the water. On the third test the mixture seemed to ball, and I was relieved because it was smelling a bit like burnt caramel and I wondered if I had stuffed it up. Then I began to stir it, to crystallise the sugar. It's supposed to start to grain and lose its gloss, but it didn't. I stirred and stirred, then I put the pan in a sink of cold water (in case the mixture needed to be cooler to grain up) and stirred some more, then I put it back on the heat (in case I'd cooled it too much) and stirred more violently. Nothing worked.

I was starting to feel very glum. I had an admittedly thick syrup, but it was still a syrup and I didn't see how it could possibly set in the moulds. FAILURE. Muttering grumpy things, I set the maple syrup bottle on the bench and carefully poured the thick syrup back in. I thought maybe I could use it as a maple caramel sauce on icecream or something.

About this time Mr Cupcake (who was also grumpy because the DVD he was watching kept freezing) came in to the kitchen and I started complaining about my failure. I got his attention by unwisely mentioning that the wasted bottle of maple syrup had cost upwards of ten bucks. I think Mr Cupcake may have felt that was rather extravagant - anyway, as a demonstration of how frugal I was in having 'transformed' the failure into a sauce for icecream, I tipped the bottle sideways to show him the consistency. And the syrup had GONE HARD.

Confusion then struck as I wondered how the hell to get it out of the glass bottle again. Mr Cupcake came to the rescue by pointing out that it may be microwaveable to a liquid again. I microwaved and poured the now- liquid syrup into the moulds, wondering if by some bizarre chance I had actually made maple candy without realising it. It took 5 minutes before I knew I had. They turned out perfectly. I'm overcome.

Recipe:
One bottle of pure maple syrup (don't use maple-flavour syrup - you need the real stuff)
Yep - that's it for the ingredients :-)

Pour the maple syrup into a heavy bottomed saucepan much larger than you think you need - this is because the syrup will boil up very high (you've been warned).
Boil the syrup to 'soft ball' stage - check by using a sugar thermometer or by the method described above. Once the syrup is at soft ball, take it off the heat and leave it to cool for 2-3 minutes, then begin stirring it with a wooden spoon.
You are looking for the texture to change and for some crystallisation to become apparent - but in my experience this was really subtle! See if the syrup being thrown up around the edges of the saucepan is hardening or crystallising. That's a good clue.
Hopefully after a few minutes you will see some evidence of crystallisation - at this point when the syrup is still a pourable liquid.
Pour the syrup into moulds if you have them, or onto some greaseproof paper in a cake tin if you don't. I used silicone chocolate moulds and they worked well.

Leave for 10 minutes or so and turn out of the moulds (or cut into squares). They will still be damp but set. Leave to dry in the open air for a few hours so that the outer layer becomes a bit lighter in colour.
They last for up to a month in an airtight container.