If you like sugar (and I mean really, really like sugar) then have I got a pie for you!
This is Maple Sugar Pie!
AuthorRetroRuth
From From Ridgewood Kitchens, Mabel Frink, 1945
Tested Recipe!
[cooked-sharing]
Cream together maple sugar and butter. Add egg and continue beating until lightened in color.
Add corn starch, salt, and cream. Beat until combined.
Pour into unbaked pie shell and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until center is set. The degree of doneness is up to your personal taste. For a darker, more caramelized pie, bake longer. For a light-colored, barely set pie, decrease the heat to 325 degrees and bake until set.
Ingredients
Directions
Cream together maple sugar and butter. Add egg and continue beating until lightened in color.
Add corn starch, salt, and cream. Beat until combined.
Pour into unbaked pie shell and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until center is set. The degree of doneness is up to your personal taste. For a darker, more caramelized pie, bake longer. For a light-colored, barely set pie, decrease the heat to 325 degrees and bake until set.
Notes
This recipe come from one of my all-time favorite cookbooks, From Ridgewood Kitchens, which was published in 1945. It’s a church cookbook (you know how I feel about those!) and many of the recipes have great illustrations to go along with them.
Speaking of recipes, how great is this recipe? “Butter the size of a walnut”? No temperature or baking time mentioned? Classic, classic American recipe format. I love it!
In case you are wondering, maple sugar is NOT brown sugar. It is sugar made by boiling down maple syrup, and most often you will find it molded into little maple leaves. Maple sugar is also very, very sweet! I tasted some straight and it was far sweeter that brown sugar. We bought ours at our local farmer’s market, but it is also for sale in specialty shops and some mega marts.
Ours was also a little hard, so I microwaved it for a few seconds before creaming it with the butter. (I took the butter straight from the fridge so it wouldn’t melt due to the warm sugar.)
This is how the filling looked before baking! It smelled heavenly.
I did a little bit of research on this pie because, well, it seemed like a really interesting pie! I found out that this is actually a favorite in Quebec. Though most of the pie recipes I found were made with maple syrup rather than maple sugar, so maybe the maple sugar version is the Vermont version??? In any case, on to the baking!
Just look at this thing! So brown and gooey!
Funny story – the original recipe says to bake it in two pie pans, so I was assuming that I could use a deep dish pie plate and bake it all together and get a deep dish Maple Sugar Pie. Which worked, kind of. I was easily able to fit it in the deep dish shell because there wasn’t that much filling at all. This recipe would be just fine in a regular pie shell and NOT split into two pies. So I made a pie with a bit of extra crust at the top, which isn’t a problem. Everyone loves crust!
Isn’t that little bit of whip cream cute? Tom and I whipped it BY HAND. Why? Because we are insane. As Clarissa from Two Fat Ladies would say, it was pure masochism.
“So…sweet…”
“Is it bad.”
“No, not at all. It’s just…concentrated maple deliciousness. In pie form.”
The Verdict: Deliciously Concentrated Maple Pie
From The Tasting Notes –
If you like toffee, or butter pecan ice cream, or ANYTHING where sugar and butter have been browned to their utmost deliciousness, then this pie is going to make you get down on your knees and weep. It was seriously that good. The pie was dense and thick, kind of like a cross between pecan pie without the pecans and buttermilk pie. The flavor was equal parts maple and caramel. It was also incredibly rich and sweet and if you aren’t big into sweet then this may not be the pie for you. It was great with whipped cream and probably would be fantastic with ice cream. And if you put pumpkin spice ice cream on this thing, it will probably be one of the most intense dessert experiences of your life.
Just add lots more whipped cream on top…over sweetness solved!!
I spent a couple of summers with relatives up in Quebec, on a farm, when I was about 12. They tapped their own maple trees and had it made into sugar and syrup, and they made this pie all the time. It was very thin and utterly delicious! Sweet, yes. So good!
When I read the original recipe I interpreted the “two crusts” as putting a top crust on it- these remind me of my grandmothers recipes- a mason jar of this, a handful of that…
You can find maple sugar at Trader Joe’s – I buy it all the time.
I have a Depression era recipe for cinnamon pie, for when there was no fresh fruit in the winter time.
Woodinville Whiskey Co., and I am sure some others, make a maple syrup aged in a whiskey barrel. I bet that would do nice things to this pie.
Have to try this… Both for the sugary goodness, and because that maple bucket recipe is perfectly lovely!
Hello ! Since I am from Québec, I thought I’d comment on this pie. Yes, tarte au sucre is extremely popular here ! It is one of those retro desserts that grandma makes better than anyone. We usually use maple syrup because it is widely available here. If you are interested in extremely sugary desserts, we also have Poudding chômeur (in english it is called poor man’s pudding) which is a traditionnal dessert made of dumpling dough baked in a sweet syrup made of brown sugar ,or maple syrup for the fancy people.
That sounds sooo good! And probably has a gazillion calories, but anyhoo….I wonder whether making it with sour cream would temper the sweetness just abit? I may try that.
Throw in a cup of nuts and have pecan pie
I'm curious if adding toasted pecans to this recipe would be a suitable substitute for classic pecan pie, perhaps making it less cloying.
I was looking for a maple pie recipe and google brought me here! Just something to note if you ever make this again – the leaves that you used as “maple sugar” is actually “maple sugar candy” and is much sweeter than actual maple sugar. Maple sugar is a granulated byproduct of maple syrup production and is available at a lot of farmer’s markets in the northeast.
Anyway, can’t wait to try this out!