Birch Syrup Sugar Pie
Ingredients
- 1 cup brown sugar packed
- 1/2 cup 35 per cent cream
- 3/4 cup birch syrup any version — early, mid, or late season
- 3 eggs lightly beaten
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 egg beaten with 1 tsp water, for egg wash
Instructions
- Combine sugar, cream, and syrup in a medium saucepan and bring to the boil over medium heat. Simmer for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring often to make sure it doesn’t boil over.
- Transfer to a bowl and let cool to room temperature.
- While the sugar and syrup mixture cools, roll out one disc of pastry (recipe follows) into a circle 12 inches in diameter. Transfer circle of dough to a 9-inch pie plate. Roll over the edges of the pastry and crimp. Brush bottom, sides, and edges of the pastry with egg wash. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before filling.
- To the cooled sugar and syrup, add eggs, lemon juice, and salt, and whisk until uniform in colour. Preheat oven to 375F.
- Pour filling into chilled pie shell and refrigerate until the oven heats up.
- Place pie on a baking sheet. Bake pie for 10 minutes on the bottom rack of the oven, move to the middle rack and bake for another 20 to 25 minutes, until crust is golden, and filling is bubbling and puffy (The filling will be quite jiggly when it comes out of the oven and will set as it cools.)
- Cool on a rack for about 40 minutes, until filling is set. Serve at room temperature with ice cream or crème fraiche.
Notes
Pastry
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup cold unsalted butter cut into tablespoon-sized pieces
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 7 Tbsp ice water
- 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
Instructions
- Combine flour, butter, and salt in a food processor and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse sand with many pea-sized pieces of butter.
- Combine water and vinegar. Pour half into the flour and butter mixture and pulse to combine, 3 or 4 pulses of 1-second each.
- Add remaining water and vinegar, and pulse 8-10 times, until the mixture begins to come together.
- Turn dough out onto a counter or a large piece of parchment paper dusted with flour and form into one large disc, pressing it into shape with your hands. Cut disc in half and form each half into a disc.
- Wrap in each disc in plastic or parchment paper and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before rolling out for pie or tarts.
Notes
On the evening of April 6, the Whitehorse Nordic Centre announced its grooming season was over, which meant that cross-country skiing on the trails at Mount Mac was just about over too.
On April 9, bird monitor Jukka Jantunen counted 246 Trumpeter swans and four Tundra swans at Swan Haven.
That same day, Berwyn Larsen and the crew at birch syrup camp above the McQuesten River harvested the first sap of the season.
Spring had truly arrived.
Berwyn Larsen started tapping trees to make birch syrup in 2005, joined by his partner Sylvia Frisch soon after. Together, they lead a crew of volunteers who tap hundreds of trees — 1700, this year — and boil down the sap to produce hundreds of litres of syrup.
This year, the team is hoping to increase the yield from 750 litres to 1000 litres — quite a feat, considering it takes 80 litres of sap to produce 1 litre of syrup.
Larsen reports that the crew this year is a good mix of old and young — “old, 70 years old fellow and young, 7 months old baby. Locals and folks from lands far away.”
The crew will work for a good four or five weeks, tapping trees, hauling sap, and boiling it down into early season, mid-season and late-season syrup. The last yield of sap for the season will be destined for Yukon Brewing’s annual Birch Beer release, eagerly anticipated by the territory’s beer aficionados.
In our household, the flight of swans overhead and news that the sap is running inspire a cooking spree every year. Our 2-litre bottle of mid-season syrup from last year must make way for the new. So, we’ll be mixing cocktails, whisking salad dressings, concocting sweets and savouries featuring our favourite northern condiment until the jug is empty.
Here’s an old classic for starters, a northern riff on the traditional Quebecoise and Acadian sugar pie.
