Maple Lace Crisps

I suppose plans are made to get thrown up in the air, right?

I've got one last busy week at work before I slow down to an absolute crawl for a few months. Some friends of my father's are throwing a Canada Day party on Sunday. My first day off after three straight late nights working, and I was planning on egg cup experiment number two on Sunday, but I need to get out a little.

The bombshell was the phone call yesterday (as I'm getting ready for work) that there's a little tradition to bring something Canada themed. Except that I work three days straight before this party. So the challenge was on.

I save a lot of recipes from a lot of different sources. You'd think I would have tucked some maple cookies, maple blondies or some other maple-flavored dessert away. Not so, as I looked through my recipe files. Then I got the idea to replace honey with maple. And I did have a recipe for Honey Lace Cookies

(Disclaimer: I am not a Martha Stewart fan. Occasionally, though, there's some good recipes that come from her or her company, not sure which).

They're fast, relatively simple and require surprisingly few ingredients – meaning I could do them around my hectic-for-me work schedule. It seemed like a perfect fit.

So, after not getting to bed until 1am this morning, at 8am I was doing a test run of these cookies:

Maple Lace Crisps

Adapted from Martha Stewart Omnimedia

Makes a little over 2 dozen

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons light-brown sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Pinch of salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line two large baking sheets with Silpats or parchment paper. Set aside. In a small saucepan, melt butter, sugar, and maple syrup. Transfer to a bowl. Whisk in flour and salt until smooth.
2. Working quickly, drop 1/2 teaspoons of batter onto prepared baking sheets, at least 3 inches apart. Bake until cookies spread and turn golden brown, about 6 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack; let cool completely. With your fingers, carefully remove cookies from pan.
   

I made two mistakes: Number one was putting them too close together on the cookie sheet (with less than six hours of sleep and only on cup of coffee #1, three inches gets pretty relative) and, because there were fewer on the pan, burning the second batch. So be it. 

I'm not going to call them “cookies”, I am going to call them “crisps”. They were more candy-like than cookie-like and I can't really imagine dunking them in tea, as the description on Delish says (unless you are using it to sweeten). However, they were definitely maple, the recipe is easily multiplied, and I give them two thumbs up. Plus, I can see several applications for them...a little green food coloring and a candy spider as a Halloween treat, maybe painted silver (with edible paints!) for a snowflake, a garnish on a sundae or, made bigger, as a base for any number of desserts. While my father has the final say, I think they'll work.

And from this lifelong Floridian, Happy Canada Day!