Maple Syrup and Birthday Cupcakes
This past weekend a good friend from high school was visiting Boston. K had a conference here last week and stayed to hang out this weekend. On top of hanging out with friends, Butler made it to the Final Four! K went to Butler and is the president of his local alumni club!
On Saturday we decided to partake in some local fun by heading up to New Hampshire to go to a maple house where they boil maple syrup. We had beautiful weather on Saturday. It was a bit chilly but sunny and not a cloud in the sky. After arriving at the Grant Family Maple House, we had some food and got in line to learn all about how maple syrup is made.
What we learned is that the sap from the trees has about 2-3% sugar in it straight from the tree. At that percentage, it would take 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup!! So they first condense the sap until it reaches about 8% sugar. The sap is then boiled to evaporate off the water.
Once the temperature reads 7 degrees above the boiling point of water, you have syrup! The guy in the maple house even explained how they use a baraometer on the wall to get the barometric pressure so they know the exact boiling temperature of water for that given day. It was all very scientific and extremely interesting.
The small bottles of maple syrup were a sample from each batch they had made at the maple house this season. The guy explained that as the season goes on, the syrup tends to get darker due to the change in the amount of sugar in the sap.
Of course, we had to get some maple products while we were there. Obviously, maple syrup. We also got some maple candies, some maple sugar, and some maple pepper. Can’t wait to find creative ways to use the sugar and pepper. If anyone has suggestions, please let me know!
Also, since K’s birthday was last week, I made him some cupcakes to celebrate. I went with my go-to chocolate cupcake recipe. I love that you can whip these up by dirtying only one bowl and using a whisk! I dipped them in some ganache and topped with festive sprinkles. Aren’t they pretty?
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
I think we both know that I’m not a baker…yet I still think I need a kitchen torch! Can I help that I’m addicted to kitchen gadgets?
I love using my kitchen torch. I think I will have whip it out soon to make these beauties. They look super delish.
These are ADORABLE! I don’t even like S’mores, but I might try these.
Kinda jealous of your kitchen torch. These smores goodies have me drooling all week!
These look great — love s’mores cupcakes. I love making these because the kitchen torch is fun to play with.
ok now all I want is smores in every variety possible LOL YUM!!!!!! thanks so much for the vote!
This looks so heavenly! I’ll be dreaming about that frosting tonight…
I recently made some s’mores cupcakes using a piece of graham cracker as a crust, but I thought it tasted salty. Of course, I used a mix, which probably did have added salt. I am going to try this method. I’d also love to try the torch! woo hoo!
These look delicious! I have got to try that marshmallow frosting…sounds amazing!
I made and blogged about these and they’re so delicious. Thanks for the inspiration. I did increase the amounts of everything but the cake batter since I had so much left over.
These are just, amazing. i used the Hershey’s ‘special dark’ cocoa powder, and they were to die for. i will definitely be making these again.
I just made delicious s’more cupcakes. Check it out: http://theaddictedbaker.blogspot.com/2011/03/smore-cookies.html