Even after fourteen years here in the Northeast Kingdom, the
first snow that falls and sticks still comes as something of a shock. I feel as
if I have to reinvent myself a bit, as a creature at home in a world of white.
Once in that
mindset, though, wrapping myself up in my long hooded coat to step outside,
it’s a strangely welcoming place, as if the snow and ice aren’t so foreign
after all, and the crystal covered trees along the roadways and the blanketed
hills behind my house provide the backdrop to a world in some ways magical and
entirely fitting.
Perhaps if you’ve
grown up in this area, the first significant snow isn’t quite as transporting.
And surely we could revisit this mystical feeling in February, when, truth be
told, the cold has seriously begun to wear out its welcome, even for someone as
dreamy headed as myself.
But the change in
season and landscape can act as a prism through which to see your changed self
as well. I feel that way about this time
of year.
About the age of
six or seven, my godmother gave me a beautifully illustrated edition of Hans
Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. On
the cover was a picture of the haughty Queen in her elegant sleigh; on top of
that picture rested a refracting lens of plastic. If you turned the book slightly in your
hands, her image seemed to float along the snowy path.
I read and reread
the story of the beautiful Queen who had no feelings, whose heart was frozen. I
don’t know if at the time I thought that was a good policy for a thing as
breakable as a heart, or if I cried with her at the end when she finally found
love and lost it, as we sometimes do, when her tears turned to stars and then
to edelweiss high on the frigid mountaintops.
Of that book, I
remember most clearly the lush paintings, tangible as photographs; the gleaming
palace of ice; those muscular horses pulling the sleigh; and the Queen herself
in her sumptuous cloak, adorned with furs at the cuffs and surrounding the hood
– not, strangely, unlike one I now own, though hers was gleaming storybook
white.
A few years
before I’d been given the book, we’d celebrated Christmas in the snowy
Connecticut town where we briefly lived.
I remember the high stone wall and the treacherous roadways, a
mechanical horse I’d found under the tree, and the lacy candies my mother made
that year.
She’d taken sugar
and water and boiled down to an amber syrup, and carefully spun snowflake
designs by letting a thin stream fall from the end of a spoon.
Once they
hardened, I held them up to the light in the windows, pretending they were
stained glass. I ate a few, of course, and we tied threads through the loops
and hung the rest on the tree.
My mother will
have been gone seven years this Christmas, and that loss colors the holiday.
But other memories rush in, too. When I asked my mother about making the candy
snowflakes, she only vaguely recalled them; I’m sure they were just one of the
two dozen things she did that year to make the season special.
But I remember.
They were for me a bit of magic made out of simple sugar, a sweet lens through
which a child could see the world anew.
I’m going to make
these again this year, to put on the tree. My own children are grown and gone
now, and are unlikely to find the wonder I found in them. But I want to see the
world that way, and myself, one more time.
Candy Snowflakes,
Hearts, and Icicles
This is not a recipe
to be prepared by children or daydreamers.
The hot syrup
requires your full attention. Please read the recipe through before beginning,
and do be very careful at every step.
3 cups sugar
1 cup water
Food color and
flavorings, optional
Aluminum foil or
parchment paper
Lay out the foil
or parchment paper on a counter or large cookie sheets. Set up a shallow baking pan full of ice and
water, too. This is a bath in which to dunk the bottom of the saucepan to stop
the cooking of the syrup, should you find that, after you’ve removed it from
the heat and are working with it, the color starts to turn too dark.
Stir the sugar
and water together in a saucepan, preferably one with high sides and a heavy
bottom. Place over medium heat, stirring until the sugar is completely
dissolved. Then raise the heat to high. Without stirring, allow the mixture to
boil until it reaches the ‘hard-ball’ stage, 300 to 310 degrees on a candy
thermometer. This will take 9 or 10
minutes. A drop of the mixture will harden quickly and break instead of bend
when removed.
Remove the pan
from the heat but keep the burner turned on in order to reheat the mixture for
a moment if it starts to cool too much while you’re making the candies. You do need the syrup to stay hot and fluid.
If desired, carefully
stir in ½ teaspoon of a flavoring extract or a few drops of food coloring. This
step is entirely unnecessary, though, as the candy is delicious and the light
amber color lovely without amending.
Creating a lacy
pattern from the syrup takes some trial and error. Solid shapes, such as hearts and icicles are
not difficult to fashion, and I must confess I have on occasion been content
with the simplest medallions.
Use a tablespoon
of syrup to create a free-form lacy design about 2 inches in diameter. Allow a
string of the syrup to fall from the tip or bowl of the spoon and simply doodle
around an imagined center. I have used the end of a skewer to work some of the
too-thick edges into a lacier pattern.
It’s comforting to know you can eat the mistakes.
You might try to
form a well-defined loop through which to thread a hanger or piece of string if
you wish to hang the snowflakes on the tree. For the solid shapes, once they
are cooling but still malleable, lift them off the foil or parchment and pierce
a hold hear the edge with a toothpick or skewer. You’ll have to work fairly
quickly to do this.
Allow the candies
to harden for 20 minutes or so. If storing, place in an airtight container,
separating layers with parchment.
This article first appeared, in a slightly different form,
in The Caledonian Record.
