Cooking with Maple: Wrap-up

By: Gwen Miner, Supervisor of Domestic Arts During March we exprimented with maple syrup as a sweetner. Here are some things we learned:

It is less sweet than granulated sugar, so if you like your recipes sweeter use a larger amount of syrup, if not, use a lesser amount.

It contains (obviously) more moisture than granulated sugar.

It does have a slight acidity which needs to be neutralized for the batter to rise and form. Add ¼ to ½ tsp. baking soda if the recipe does not call for buttermilk, sour milk or sour cream. We did not add soda to the cookies and they worked just fine.

It will tend to caramelize and burn on the top and edges before a batter using a solid sweetener.

Enjoy! Try giving maple syrup a try as a sweetener.