By The maple season hit its peak this week with three consecutive days of ideal conditions — overnight lows in the mid-twenties, daytime highs in the low forties, clear skies, a light wind that keeps the warmth from building too fast. I boiled four times over the week and produced just over twelve gallons of syrup, which puts me on track for one of the better seasons in recent years. The operation is small but it is mine and the syrup is from these specific trees on this specific hillside and tastes of that place in a way that any other syrup, however good, cannot.
Bill called Wednesday morning from his neighbor's sugarbush — he was there watching the boil in real time and was narrating it to me between sentences, which made me laugh. He described the foam rising exactly as I had told him to watch for, the way the syrup began to pull and thicken, the smell of it, the specific color shift from clear amber to dark gold. He said at one point: "I understand now." I asked what he meant and he said he meant that he understood why I had been describing this season every March since we had been corresponding, what the pull of it was, why a man with a reasonable number of trees would spend the cold dark mornings doing hard physical labor for a product he could purchase at a farmstand. He said: "It's because the syrup is yours." I told him that was exactly right and also that it was more than that, but that that was the right place to start.
He bottled four half-pint jars from his first year's yield — sixteen quarts of sap, reduced to four half-pints of finished syrup, sent one jar to his daughter in Connecticut and kept three for himself. He texted me a photograph of the four jars lined up on his counter and the color was beautiful — medium amber, clear, the proper deep gold. I told him his first year syrup was better than some operations manage in five years and he responded with something close to quiet pride, which is the right emotion for a first year.
The St. Patrick's Day post this week was Helen's corned beef and cabbage, a recipe she inherited from her own family's Maine Irish branch and never altered except to add a Guinness to the braising liquid. I made it Sunday and photographed it and wrote about the Maine Irish branch of her family, something I have not mentioned in the blog before. The response confirmed that the Helen notebook series is working the way I hoped — each recipe opening outward into people and places and histories that are worth preserving.
When Bill said “it’s because the syrup is yours,” he named something I have been circling for years, and it seemed right to end this week by putting that syrup to work in a recipe that respects what it is — not a background sweetener but the point of the thing. Maple pumpkin butter is a preserve in the truest sense: it concentrates the syrup into something you can keep, spread, and share, the way Bill sent a jar to his daughter in Connecticut. These pancakes are what I made the morning after the last boil, the griddle still warm, the kitchen smelling of the season coming to its close.
Pumpkin Pancakes with Maple Pumpkin Butter
Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 45 minutes | Servings: 4 (about 12 pancakes)
Ingredients
- Maple Pumpkin Butter
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- 1/4 cup pure maple syrup
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- Pinch of salt
- Pumpkin Pancakes
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
- 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Butter or neutral oil for the griddle
Instructions
- Make the maple pumpkin butter. Combine the pumpkin puree, maple syrup, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and salt in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook, stirring frequently, for 15 to 20 minutes until the mixture thickens and darkens slightly. Remove from heat, stir in the butter until melted, and transfer to a jar. It will keep refrigerated for up to two weeks.
- Mix the dry ingredients. Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and salt in a large bowl.
- Mix the wet ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, pumpkin puree, maple syrup, eggs, melted butter, and vanilla until smooth and uniform.
- Combine. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir gently until just combined. Do not overmix — a few lumps are correct. Let the batter rest for 5 minutes while the griddle heats.
- Cook the pancakes. Heat a griddle or heavy skillet over medium heat and grease lightly with butter or oil. Pour about 1/4 cup of batter per pancake. Cook until bubbles form across the surface and the edges look set, 2 to 3 minutes, then flip and cook 1 to 2 minutes more. Adjust heat as needed — pumpkin pancakes brown faster than plain.
- Serve. Stack the pancakes and top with a generous spoonful of maple pumpkin butter and a drizzle of additional maple syrup if you have it to spare.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 410 | Protein: 10g | Fat: 13g | Carbs: 64g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 480mg