National Maple Syrup Day
Have some delicious maple syrup pancakes on #NationalMapleSyrupDay
17 December is National Maple Syrup Day, the perfect opportunity to start your day with a breakfast of pancakes or French toast drenched in maple syrup.
Maple syrup is usually made from the xylem sap of sugar maple, red maple or black maple trees, but it is not limited to these maple species. In cold climates, maple trees store starch in their trunks and roots. In the spring, the starch is converted to sugar and rises in the sap. The sap is collected when it is released through holes bored into the tree-trunks. The collected sap is processed by heating to evaporate most of the water to leave a concentrated syrup.
The indigenous people of North America were the first to collect, process and use maple syrup. The European settlers then adopted the practice and gradually refined the production method. Further refinements in syrup processing were made in the 1970s, as a result of technological improvements.
A maple syrup production farm is called a sugarbush or sugarwood and the sap is boiled in a sugar house – also known as a sugar shack, sugar shanty or a cabane à sucre.
Until the 1930s, the United States was the largest maple syrup producer, but today, Canada is the world’s largest producer of maple syrup.
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