- Pure maple syrup, boiled to the soft-ball stage
- Clean packed snow
- A wooden stick for rolling
Maple Taffy
Children eating maple taffy on snow, Quebec (1956). Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Maple taffy (tire d'érable) is the ritual of the sugar shack: hot maple syrup poured in ribbons onto clean snow, left to cool for a few seconds, then rolled onto a wooden stick and eaten.
It happens during sugaring-off season, roughly March and April, at cabanes à sucre across Quebec. The full sugar-shack meal, pea soup, ham, baked beans, pancakes with syrup, ends with the taffy outside in the snow.
Key ingredients
Where to try it
- Sugar shacks (cabanes à sucre) around Montreal and Quebec City, March to April.
- Winter festivals, including Quebec's Winter Carnival.