Maple Creams

The holidays are a time for treats from the kitchen as well in a stocking or under the tree. For many of us, the best come from grandma’skitchen and some even pre-date it. I have been blessed with several grandmotherly influences in my life, and each of them understood the importance of using holidays not just to celebrate events but the family. As many families do, each of them sent delights to the table that were special to the family traditions of the holidays. Nana’s German kitchen gave us fruit-studded stollen under a snowdrift of powered sugar and spicy apple strudel with layers of hand-pulled dough. My French grandmère fussed for days over a bûche de noel that was as complicated and charming as she was, from the foamy whip of the pastry cream to the painstaking detailing of the meringue mushrooms.

Spectacular desserts certainly belong on the holiday table, but my grandmother’s idea of one was likelier to be a cake or pie. She tended to make candy for the holidays, and she was an expert cookie baker. For the holidays, she made iced gingerbread people and sparkly garish sugar cookies. Even though it was the west, she associated the holidays with winter, and liked icing because it was snowy white and sanding sugar because it glittered like ice. And in honor of the lessons of northern winters where Grand-mère had settled with her family, my grandmother made maple creams.

Maple is one of the signature flavors of winter. Whether your travels over the river and through the woods are taking you to grandmother’s house or the mall, there is always time for an energizing lumberjack breakfast in a diner along the turnpike. Short stacks of flapjacks, pancakes, wheatcakes, johnny cakes and waffles are borne to the table crowned with rivulets of butter and awaiting a flood of maple syrup from the jug of it the hostess plunked down with the menus and the coffee cups.

Maple cream is another way to celebrate the distinct wintery flavor of maple. Traditional maple cream is maple syrup, coddled in a hot bath like a nice child but paddled like a naughty one, until it forms a thick, spreadable cream that is as common on breakfast tables in maple country as is butter for the toast and salt and pepper for the eggs. Adapted as a simple pastry cream, flavored with a sweet kiss of maple and a woodsy hint of nutmeg and slathered between maple sugar cookies, it becomes a sweet treat worthy of celebration mode.

Here is urban home’s recipe for maple creams, based on notes from my grandmother's heirloom recipe. These are rolled cookies, cut into maple shapes and baked until crisp enough to handle a dollop of maple pastry cream, and then topped with themselves to form sandwich cookies. They are sweet and special, and though there is no such thing as an unwelcome cookie, these will be a welcome change of pace at any holiday event from the office cookie swap to the church coffee hour, from a holiday parcel to the holiday table.

Maple Creams

In America, pure grade A maple syrup refers to high-quality processed syrup without any additional ingredients including flavorings or colorings. If you prefer, you can build your sandwich cookies with Vermont maple cream; order it here. You can obtain maple sugar from a gourmet grocery or baking- or candy-making supplier; rolling the dough in that is a nice touch if you wish. We use a hand mixer to make cookies in our urban kitchen, but you could make these cookies using a stand mixer. If you want to cut your cookies in the form of autumn leaves, you can order a set here. 

For the cookies

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar, plus extra for rolling

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1 large egg

1/2 cup pure grade A maple syrup

2 sticks unsalted butter

1/4 teaspoon table salt

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg 

For the maple pastry cream

1 cup heavy cream

1/3 cup pure grade A maple syrup

Ground nutmeg 

Make the cookies

1.        Unwrap the butter and place it into a large mixing bowl. Set the butter aside to soften.

2.        Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

3.        Pull two lengths of parchment paper and nestle them into two 13 x 9 rimmed baking sheets. Butter the paper.

4.        Sift flour, salt and nutmeg into a mixing bowl. Place near the bowl containing the butter.

5.        Once the butter is workable, measure the granulated and brown sugars into the bowl containing the butter. Beat the butter and sugars until the mixture is pale and thick, approximately 2 minutes.

6.        Place a small bowl beside the bowl containing the sugar-butter mixture. Hold an egg separator over the bowl. Crack the egg over the egg separator, allowing the white to fall into the bowl. Transfer the yolk (work carefully; it may be messy) to the bowl containing the sugar-butter mixture. Reserve the egg white for another use.

7.        Measure the maple syrup into a measuring cup and then pour the syrup into the bowl containing the sugar-butter-egg mixture. Use a silicon spatula to ensure that you get all of the syrup into the bowl.

8.        Use the mixture to combine the ingredients in the bowl until pale and creamy. If necessary, safely remove the beaters and use the spatula to scrape down the beaters. Re-attach the beaters to the mixer.

9.        Add the flour mixture to the bowl. Use the mixer to incorporate the flour into the mixture in the bowl to form a dough.

10.    Sprinkle a clean work surface with sugar. Gently turn one half of the dough onto the surface. Sprinkle the dough with sugar.

11.    Working gently, roll the dough until it is a uniform thickness (approximately 1/4 inch). Dip a cookie cutter in sugar and cut the dough into shapes.

12.     Use a spatula to gently transfer the cookies to one of the baking sheets. Space the cookies  1/2" -- 3 /4" apart.

13.    Transfer the baking sheet to the preheated oven. Bake the cookies until they are crisp and display lightly golden edges, approximately 12 minutes.

14.    Remove the baking sheet containing the baked cookies from the oven and place it on pot holders away from the heat. Once the cookies are cool enough to handle without breaking (approximately two minutes), gently transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool.

15.    While the first tray is in the oven, repeat steps 10 - 13 with the remaining half of the dough. While the first tray is cooling repeat steps 14 - 15 with the remaining cookies.

16.    Once all of the cookies are baked and cooled and you have made the pastry cream, spoon a dollop of cream onto a cooled cookie. Position a second cookie on top of the cream (you may need to turn the second cookie upside down) and gently press it into the cream to form a sandwich.

17.    Serve, pack or store cookies in an airtight container. 

Make the cream

1.        Measure the maple syrup into a small saucepan. Sprinkle the syrup with a pinch of ground nutmeg.

2.        Turn the burner to medium. Cook the syrup until it is thick and fragrant; approximately ten minutes.

3.        Place the reduced syrup in the refrigerator for five minutes while you whip the cream.

4.        Measure the cream into a bowl and whip on medium high until soft peaks form.

5.        Remove the reduced syrup from the refrigerator. Hold the pan containing the reduced syrup over the cream. Use one hand to pour the reduced syrup in a thin stream into the whipped cream while using the other hand to run the mixer on low to incorporate the reduced syrup into the whipped cream.

6.        Stop when you have used all of the syrup and the whipped cream is light and well-incorporated. Refrigerate the cream until it is time to assemble the cookie sandwiches.