Maple Butter and Taffy Cones by L’Erable au Fils du Temps
These looked intriguing, not only because I presume anything in an ice-cream cone is likely to be good, but because they are being marketed as a collation énergétique (“power snack”).
Really? Wow. Okay.
Intact, anyway.
At first glance, the container and label design are super-cute and so are the tiny cones. They are also made with real maple syrup (a requirement for Maple Report candidates) and maple syrup has micronutrients and anti-oxidants, so what’s not to love?
One surmises that, if it’s a maple-syrup “power snack” in an ice-cream cone, it must not only be good-tasting, but good for you.
But one surmises wrong sometimes. Seductive packaging can conceal a corrupt cornet.
Were these maple-butter-and-taffy cones maple-y? Yes…stickily so. Power-snack-y? Not so much.
First off, the cones were soft. BIG fail. Ice-cream cones must by definition crunch and flake, so these cones immediately let you down. Suddenly, at first bite, they are not so cute anymore.
Then, once you chew, you find the maple filling isn’t really a maple butter or taffy–more like caramel that is cloyingly sweet AND strikingly salty.
(Now hear me out: I get why younger folk like to put salt on sweet stuff. It was delicious and fun when the trend first started a decade or so ago to put salt on your ice cream, in your chocolate bars, on top of all your baked goods. It was a way for digital natives to Millennial those Boomer snacks, and make them their own.
But what was once a mere “salt note” is now wielded like a salt baseball bat, pummeling every other flavor and knocking out the contributions of any other interesting ingredients. I’m over it. Can we all just have dessert sometimes without it tasting like a potato chip? or having to worry about our blood pressure? Can other flavor notes be allowed to come through now and again, maybe even some sweetness, please-and-merci-beaucoup?
But I digress.)
So not only did the makers of these maple butter/taffy cones give me wimpy floppy cones, but they added enough salt to TKO almost all of the maple flavor. This “power snack” was not the dreamy edible-tree-sap experience I was hoping for. I am doubly disappointed, and now also needing a diuretic.
In conclusion: I really wanted to like these cones, but they look better than they taste, and the taste is that of your salty tears after you realize you got rooked by nicely-designed packaging.
They might be better with something bitter to wash them down like coffee or strychnine, though you’d think the disappointment alone would be bitter enough.
MAPLE REPORT SCORE
Cuteness: 9+
Cone quality: -10
Maple flavor and consistency: barely, treacly
Recommend??: nope
Side note, this explainer about nutrition information percentages seems to now be required on all the food labels up here:
3 replies on “The Maple Report Returns!”
For what it’s worth, I found the top layer to be nice and maple-y, but the jelly layer below was a sugar bomb. Overall these were on the barely tolerable edge of tooth-achingly sweet.
I’m with you on the salty desserts – I always pick off the salt cubes on my chocolates, luckily the grains are quite large
It was okay at first, when it was subtle. Now, not so much. To be fair, the salt in these cones was in the cone, and it varied from cone to cone–the ones I had after the initial taster were much less salty. So maybe okay on the salt in general, but not consistency of product!!