Sugaring off and Bacon-Wrapped, Maple-Glazed Roasted Carrots

by Aimee

I grew up as the younger sibling to both a brother and a sister and everything happened to them first: sleepovers, concerts, dating, driving lessons…

It was one of those things I had to make peace with, knowing that eventually I too would be able to wear make-up, get a summer job, or go overnight camping with just friends and no adults.

Watching spring come to our Southern neighbours in a splash of vibrant colour on Instagram while we are still sitting in slushy mud requires a similar resignation. I know it won’t be long before I too am snapping the ends off of bright green asparagus or roasting strawberries for an ice cream sundae, but for now, I have to be patient.

Fortunately, here in Eastern Canada we have a fifth season to tide us over until the blossoms bloom and the bulbs burst – the maple sap run. It’s an utterly magical few weeks when the towering maples, which already give so much in shade, oxygen and sheer beauty, offer up their sweet, sweet sap for the taking.

This is one harvest we’ve been reaping for the last few years, in our own small-scale way. A few weeks ago we tapped the trees, hung five buckets and waited. Each afternoon the boys would drop their school bags on the porch and run to check the buckets.

Finally the sunshine warmed the trees enough for it to draw the sap up from the roots and we were in business. When the first bucket came into my kitchen, I poured ice cold glasses of the sap for everyone, and not just because it is trendy right now.

Maple sap is incredibly refreshing, and satisfying, in an unexplainable way. I imagine it tasting similar to the Last Sea water in ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’. “Sweet! Sweet!” cheeped Reepicheep. Caspian compared it to drinking “light”. Lucy said it was the loveliest thing she had ever tasted.

I boiled a large pot every day, with the overhead fans blasting on my stove. My afternoon ritual was to pour the boiling maple water over loose leaf Earl Grey tea and add a splash of milk. Pre-sweetened, maple-scented tea.

Reducing sap to maple syrup can be maddeningly slow, until, of course, you decide to slip away for a bit. I over-reduced two entire batches (about 10 gallons of sap), which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because the stuff is so wonderfully versatile.

One batch of extra thick syrup I scraped into the stand mixer and beat it until it was creamy, otherwise known as maple butter. It was consistency of churned honey, and utterly delicious slathered on biscuits, pancakes and cornbread.

The other batch turned grainy, so I cooled it in a jar where it hardened somewhat, but still remained scoopable. We stirred it into our morning oatmeal, and it’s been long gone for a while. A scrumptious mistake.

There were a few successful boils, too…

We ended up with these seven jars of pure maple syrup. Some are a little cloudier than others. A few have ultra fine sediment on the bottom, despite having been filtered three times. The colour varies from batch to batch. Even the taste is slightly unique to each jar.

It’s all such an utterly fascinating process, this maple syrup business. I honestly think I could devote my life to it and still learn something every season. Wouldn’t that be a sweet career.

The children love the fresh maple water, too, but hold out for the good stuff: maple taffy. Once we finally finish a boil, I shoo them outdoors to pack down the snow for a pour. This year I was all out of popsicle sticks, so we used paper straws to roll our sticky lollipops.

My ‘recipe’ and simple method for maple taffy on snow is in Brown Eggs and Jam Jars. I’m pretty sure it’s my children’s favourite page.

Maple syrup lends itself so well to cooking and baking, it’s no wonder I included an entire chapter ‘Sugaring Off’ in my cookbook. Those recipes such as Maple Pecan Butter Tarts and Maple Cider Baked Beans are just a few of our absolute favourites, and every season I develop a few more.

This year, the simplest recipe for Bacon-Wrapped, Maple-Glazed Roasted Carrots stole the show.

Bacon-wrapped asparagus is totally a thing (or proscuitto-wrapped) and for all the right reasons. But we won’t be seeing any of those spring greens for weeks and weeks. In the meantime, I suggest we substitute carrots in their place, roast them to a crisp and glaze them with maple syrup to finish them off.

Sold yet? It’s an utterly simple, three-ingredient recipe. Get ready to roast!

Do you cook with maple syrup?

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