Maple Snow

Description
In the center of Canada's flag is a red maple leaf-a symbol of Canada's many maple trees. No wonder everyone likes to turn out in the early spring to help collect the sweet liquid from the sugar maples. The snow is still on the ground. The sap is gathered and boiled down into maple syrup. As a special treat, the hot syrup is poured over fresh snow. With cider and doughnuts, cups of sweet maple snow make festive refreshments at a sugaring-off party.

Ingredients

 * 1 cup of clean snow or 1 tray of ice cubes
 * ½ cup maple syrup

Equipment

 * pan or bowl
 * measuring cup
 * saucepan
 * 4 small paper cups
 * tablespoon

Directions

 * 1) Fill a pan with snow. Be sure it is clean.
 * 2) Have all your ingredients ready before you bring in the snow, so it doesn't have time to melt. If there isn't any snow, make crushed ice. An easy way to do this is wrap a few cubes of ice at time in a kitchen towel and pound them with a heavy object, such as a rolling pin. Put the crushed in a bowl. Continue until all the cubes are crushed.
 * 3) Heat the maple syrup in the saucepan over low heat for about two minutes until it is warm.
 * 4) Remove it from the heat.
 * 5) Fill each paper cup with enough snow or ice to make a rounded top.
 * 6) Drop a tablespoon or more of maple syrup on top of the snow or ice.
 * 7) Note: you can use either pure maple syrup or maple-flavored syrup for this recipe.