To make maple sugar, the process is rather simple. You’ll need a sauce pan, a small amount of butter or oil, some maple syrup, a thermometer you can trust, a hand blender, spoon or whisk, a fine mesh strainer and a coffee grinder or blender.
With a goal of being as self reliant as possible, one thing we hope to eliminate out of our grocery lists is sugar. We have thousands of maple trees on the property. So naturally, we make maple syrup, which gets turned into a number of different products. One such product is maple sugar. This can be used to replace regular white sugar. The commercial production of refined white sugar has a massive environmental footprint. When it comes to homemade sugar, from tree to sugar, we know exactly the process used to create this sweet sugar substitute that actually has the benefit of having a number of nutrients locked inside.
Start by emptying your maple syrup jar into the sauce pan. Also at this point, spread a small amount of butter on the inside edge of your sauce pan. The butter will help cut back on the syrup foaming up as you bring it up to temperature. The butter or oil is optional, but it really does help to keep the foaming down.
Keeping a close eye on the syrup as it heats is a must. DO NOT LEAVE IT UNATTENDED!
Your maple syrup will begin to boil violently as it comes up to maple sugar temperature, so be prepared to lift the pot off of the burner for a few seconds if the syrup gets too close to the top edge of the pot.
Maple Syrup Reaching Boiling Point
Finished maple syrup is boiled to 104C, or 219F. In order to make maple sugar, we need to bring the temperature up to 128C, or 262F. Watching your thermometer closely at this stage is critical.
Maple Sugar Boiling Temperature
Once you have reached 128C, or 262F, it’s time for the real fun to begin. Remove your pot from the burner and immediately start mixing with your hand blender on the lowest setting. The liquid in the pot will begin to change to a lighter colour, and will begin to thicken slightly.
Maple Sugar Blending
Shortly after the liquid begins to thicken and lighten in colour, the liquid will magically turn into a powdered form. Your maple sugar is now almost finished.
Maple Sugar Crystalizing
At this point, you can switch over to using a spoon to continue mixing the maple sugar until it has cooled and lost the majority of it’s moisture. Once cooled, scrap your sauce pan full of maple sugar into a fine mesh strainer positioned over a bowl large enough to catch the maple sugar in.
Maple Sugar Chunks
Sift the maple sugar through the screen until you are left with the pieces that are too large to pass through the screen. At this point, transfer your large chunks into a coffee grinder or blender and pulse blend everything, until all of the maple sugar passes through the fine mesh strainer.
The result is your home made maple sugar. Use this at a 1:1 ratio in any recipe that calls for regular white sugar.
Finished, sifted and ready to use Maple Sugar