Homemade Maple Syrup

Rachel and Ben had some pancakes for breakfast this morning. As I was getting the imitation maple syrup for Rachel, I looked at the bottle's ingredients list and saw this: "High fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, water, sugar syrup, natural and artificial maple flavor, salt, potassium sorbate (preservative), caramel color." Yuck.

I'm not someone who's overly concerned about having corn syrup (high fructose or otherwise) here and there, but it just struck me that this is supposed to be maple syrup, and it contains a lot of other junk in addition to any maple flavor. I rarely buy real maple syrup because the taste can be strong if you're used to artificial, plus it's expensive. But this is one of those things where I think I need to make the change and go with the real stuff, instead of something that's loaded with junk.

A few of my Facebook friends suggested making your own syrup. I almost dismissed the idea until I did a search and found out that making homemade maple syrup is shockingly easy. Here's the recipe, courtesy of Hubpages.com:

Combine 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of water in a sauce pan and stir to dissolve, while heating to a boil. After the sugar dissolves add 1/2 tsp of maple extract and stir it in well. When it boils, turn the heat down just enough to keep it boililng, but not boiling over. Boil for 3 minutes. Let cool and store in old syrup jugs.

That's it. Seriously, could it be any easier? You can add other flavorings to have different flavors of syrup, like strawberry or blueberry or butter rum. I love strawberry syrup on pancakes and raspberry syrup on French toast, so I'm looking forward to trying out those ones.