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Sugar-on-snow a time-honored treat in North Country

Posted 2/26/12

POTSDAM -- In this photo from the Potsdam Public Museum collection, a group of men and women are gathered around a wooden collection barrel eating sugar-on-snow in 1895. Potsdam Historian Mimi Van …

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Sugar-on-snow a time-honored treat in North Country

Posted

POTSDAM -- In this photo from the Potsdam Public Museum collection, a group of men and women are gathered around a wooden collection barrel eating sugar-on-snow in 1895.

Potsdam Historian Mimi Van Deusen tells us that sugar-on-snow has been a North Country tradition at sugar houses and sugar shacks for nearly two centuries.

The best snow, she says, is the grainy stuff that the old timers call sugar snow. It falls from the winter sky in late February and early March. This fresh snow is gathered and packed into bowls or pie tins.

The maple used to make this confection is made by boiling the sap past the syrup stage to 234 degrees. It is then drizzled over the packed snow cooling rapidly, forming thin, glassy, chewy, taffy-like sheets on the snow. You just twirl it around a spoon or stick and enjoy the sweetness.

In Lewis County, up Soft Maple Road, it is referred to by the locals as “lick dob”.