Maple Snow Candy

Today, we’re going back to Winterfell, and apparently so is the rest of the East Coast. When life gives you a March blizzard, the only thing to get you through is to eat. I’m very much a proponent of eating your feelings, and since we’d nearly gotten rid of all our snow, and are now facing up to 2 feet more today, I’m just going to go on eating until it melts.

Starting with these:

If you haven’t ever encountered this, the idea is you boil down maple syrup and drizzle it over hard packed snow, which then sets it. These end up being a bit like maple candy lollipops, or like a hard taffy that melts in your mouth. And oh man, are they delicious.

Can’t you just see them being a seasonal treat when the Winter Town opens outside Winterfell? The young Stark children running about with the children of Ned’s bannermen, all of them with sticky hands and smiling faces. It’s a happy picture, and I don’t know about you, but I could use a little of that on such a murky, snowy day!

Maple Snow Candy Recipe

Components:

• 1/2 cup maple syrup (or lots, lots more)
• candy thermometer
• popsicle sticks
• a dish of packed snow

Pack some fresh, clean snow onto a pie plate or a baking sheet, and set outside (or in the freezer) to keep it cold.

Pour your maple syrup into a saucepan over medium-high heat. Put the thermometer in, and bring the syrup up to soft-ball stage, about 235F. Take it right off the heat and drizzle it over the packed snow. Stick a popsicle stick in one end of the drizzled sugar and twirl into blobs. Eat, and be happy.