It’s an old farmhouse tradition: During maple sugaring season in the spring, warm syrup is drizzled onto freshly fallen snow, where it hardens and forms a chewy-crisp candy as crazy looking as the work of a drunken spider. Known also as frogs or leather aprons, sugar on snow is so intensely mapley that it is sometimes eaten with dill pickles, which help revive an exhausted sweet tooth, as well as with apple cider donuts, corn fritters, or common crackers. It is impractical for restaurant service, but it sometimes is available at sugarhouses in New England in the spring.
The ad hoc confection became inspiration for a candy branded Chocolate Lace, for which filaments of caramel resembling sugar on snow are dipped in pans of melted bittersweet chocolate. The chocolate hardens and creates a gossamer confection of two completely different sorts of sweetness that are dramatic complements for each other. Chocolate Lace is a proprietary product; for information, www.hauserchocolates.com.