Last year, in maple season sometime around the middle to end of March, we had a sugar snow. It looked like this:
A sugar snow is a late winter/early spring snow that encourages the maple season to extend, by slowing down the trees production with cold nights. It’s the kind of snow that comes down one day and is gone the next. We haven’t had that kind of weather this year, and our maple sap harvesting may be over or close to over for the year - a couple weeks earlier than last year. So yesterday we made maple cream to celebrate.
If you like spreadable honey, honey butter, Nutella, maple glazed doughnuts, etc, you might love maple cream. (Also known as maple spread, or maple butter.) It’s not hard to make it, just takes some attention. We put a couple quarts of maple syrup in a deep pan, and brought it to a boil, then boiled it until the temperature - by candy thermometer - came up to 236 degrees F. It bubbles and foams up in the pan a great deal, thus the deep pan. I forgot to take pictures of it at this stage - too bad! But below are some of the finished product.
After it reaches this boiling temperature, we set the pan in a basin of ice water to cool rapidly. You’re not supposed to “disturb” it in any way while it cools (don’t stir). We waited until the temperature was around 70 degrees, then we divided it up between three bowls, took three wooden spoons, and three people started stirring.
This part went on for a long time. You pretty much stir until you think your arm will fall off, then switch to the other hand and stir until you have to switch again. You stir, past being certain it’s not working and you should give up and stop. It really helps to have several people doing it, because you can compare progress and egg each other on, and distract each other. The other thing you could do is switch back and forth between a couple people so you can rest your arm.
Eventually, after stirring with no results for what seems like forever (probably it’s about 15 minutes or so) you realize that your mixture is starting to change color and texture. You keep on stirring, and things happen faster at this point. The sugar is crystallizing, but the combination of the temperature it heated to, the rapid cooling, and your stirring is making it form very tiny crystals. This gives it a creamy texture. The color changes from golden-brown maple syrup color to light buff yellow, and it feels different to stir. It looks eerily like creamy peanut butter or cashew butter, or wood glue. When it gets to the point of having a dull sheen to the surface when you stop stirring a moment, it’s done. We spooned it into jars, divided them up, and put them in our refrigerators. This stuff has a shorter lifespan, and must be refrigerated. 
How can we describe maple cream? It disappears in your mouth. It looks like it will be TOO sweet and gooey, and it’s not. It’s great on toasts, popovers, muffins, cakes, and spoons. I’ve been wondering what it might be like to freeze teaspoons of it and dip them in dark chocolate. It’s very special, and we’re glad we kept stirring!
