When we were young, our parents bought a house in Craftsbury Common, a tiny town in the Northeast corner of Vermont. There's a post office, a general store, a church, a library and frankly, not much else. The isolation of this place was troubling in former years (at sixteen, for example), but now it is to us, a tonic: a place where there is no coffee shop directly below our apartment, no cell phone reception and no schedule.

Rifling through the remains of the house's cookbook library (which was amassed sometime in the 50's when it was used as the high school's home ec facility), we came across a promotional brochure from the Vermont Maple Promotion Board. It gave information about maple trees and sugar houses (it takes 35 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of delicious Vermont maple syrup!) and a few maple-laden recipes, a surprising number of which actually sounded good.

Now we love candy, so naturally we gravitated towards the brochure's recipe for maple sugar candy. It was extremely simple and what's more, at the end we would have a big pile of intensely maple-y (and with that intensely sweet) maple sugar candy to call our own. The recipe had one ingredient: maple syrup and required only a heavy pan (check) and a candy thermometer (uh-oh). The recipe simply asked you to heat maple syrup without stirring to 238 degrees F, soft-ball stage, then stir the mixture off of the heat until it crystallized and pour into a pan. Easy.

I'd love to say the candy turned out perfectly, but it didn't. Maple syrup boils up to about five times its normal volume, so we had to switch it into a larger pan after making a mess all over the stove. Without a thermometor, we overcooked our candy and it didn't have that soft, melty quality that we would like--however, it still tasted like maple heaven.

We do love it here in the middle of nowhere, but it can't be denied that we are looking forward to trying this recipe again at home, with our own pots and pans, our trusty candy thermometer and a delicious coffee to go with our finished candy.

An expanded recipe for maple sugar candy is after the break.

Photo by Rachael Coyle with technical assistance from Max Coyle

We would recommend starting with about a cup of grade A maple syrup (Vermont is good for authenticity's sake, but not a necessity). Pour it into a large--larger than you think you need--heavy saucepan and set over high heat. Clip a candy thermometer to the side and whatever you do, don't stir. Stirring can cause the sugar to crystallize prematurely (you want to the sugar to crystallize only after it's reached the correct temperature). Cook to 238 degrees F and take off of the heat. With a wooden spoon, stir the mixture until it changes consistency--it will become grainy instead of glossy, lighten in color and foam up a bit--it will take about five minutes. Pour it onto pan lined with parchment or foil and let cool. Cut into very small pieces and enjoy.