Maple Sugar: Beyond Candy, Part 2

By: Gwen Miner, Domestic Arts Supervisor Every Sunday in the month we will be hosting our traditional Sugaring Off Sundays, at The Farmers' Museum. In the More House kitchen we will be cooking with maple sugar and syrup. We have used maple sugar in the historic foodways program here at the museum for many years, but this will be the first year that we will feature it, and maple syrup, in a specific cooking demonstration on Sugaring Off Sundays.

We will be using both traditional mid-19th century receipts that would have used maple sugar as well as a few from a cookbook that was printed here in our print shop back in the 1950s. Pat, my lead Domestic Arts Interpreter, tested some of these recipes and on Sundays we will cook them in the More House. In the meantime here’s a recipe for you to try. This one uses maple syrup, as maple sugar is hard to come by in quantity these days. Notice the directions read a bit differently than we are accustomed to today. I haven’t even tried these yet. If you try them out yourself, make sure to leave a comment for us so we know how it turned out, or come to one of our Sunday demonstrations to talk about it, or ask questions. Maple Cake ½ cup of shortening ½ cup of sugar 1 egg, yolks of 2 more 1 ½ cups of sifted cake flour ½ t. baking soda 2 t. baking powder ½ t. ginger ½ cup of hot water ½ t. salt Cream, shortening and sugar; add eggs beaten without separating. Sift and measure flour, then sift again with ginger, soda, baking powder and salt. Add to the first mixture, alternating with the syrup then the water. Bake in a tube pan at 375˚ about 50 minutes. Cover with maple icing. Nice to decorate with nutmeats. Icing ¼ cup of water ½ cup maple syrup 1/8 t. salt ½ cup brown sugar 1 egg white Boil sugar, maple syrup and water until it will spin in a thread. Pour stirring continually over the beaten egg to which salt has been added. Beat until cool enough to spread.