A Taste of Autumn and of a Place

maple sugar candies fresh from Canada

While most people anticipate turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie and all the rest when the year’s end rolls around, my favorite autumn food is those maple sugar candies shaped like maple leaves that you find in New England and Canada. Himself was in Toronto recently, so I asked him to bring me back some.

This candy is swoonworthy stuff. Just set a piece on your tongue and let it dissolve and coat your mouth in the rich, autumnal sweetness that comes only from real maple.

Aside from being really good, these simple little candies represent one of the first times I ever noticed–back in my pre-food writing days–how people react to the food of other places. When I was working as a tour guide conducting fall foliage tours in New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces, I’d buy boxes of maple candy and pass them around to the guests on my bus as I described how maple sap is harvested and made into syrup–and candy. It was a wonderfully personal and special way to help them experience the region we were visiting and gave them an extra reason to love those fiery yellow, orange and red landscapes. Plus, for anyone wanting to bring home the maple experience, it’s much easier to slip a box of candy into your carry-on than to wrap and pack bottles of syrup in your checked luggage.

Autumn leaves are stunning, and the air is crisp and refreshing to bask in, but it’s nice to be able to appeal to yet another sense, to share the flavor of a season and of a place. While most sap is collected in the spring, fall is usually when I find myself in New England and eastern Canada, so I connect maple candy with this season. One bite and I’m transported back to those brisk and beautiful golden lit leafscapes. That’s a good thing, too, since it was 94º in Los Angeles earlier this week.

If you can’t get your hands on maple candy right now, you can still have fun with a bottle of maple syrup and substitute it for honey or molasses. And by maple syrup I don’t mean Mrs. Butterworth, Aunt Jemima, Log Cabin or any of those other super-sweet products made of corn syrup and flavored to be reminiscent of maple. Real maple syrup is a little runnier, but you don’t need as much, because the flavor is rich and intense. A little goes a long way.

Drizzle some over vanilla ice cream. Stir it into your oatmeal instead of honey.

Or make a cocktail. This recipe comes from Bar None Drinks, which has a nice array of cocktail recipes that call for maple syrup. I have my eye on several, but right now I’m having a Woodstock.

Woodstock

This one appeals to me because it calls for gin, which I prefer over amber spirits. While I usually connect gin and lemon juice with summery drinks, including maple syrup and orange bitters give this cocktail a nice hint of fall.

Woodstock

1½ oz. gin

1 oz. freshly-squeezed lemon juice

1½ tsp. maple syrup

a dash or two of orange bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker filled with ice, shake and serve in a cocktail glass garnished with a twist of orange peel.