Did you know the syrup you pour on your pancakes comes from maple trees? It does if you use real maple syrup instead of the imitation maple syrups you can also find at grocery stores.
Real maple syrup is thin like water, and it’s sweet as can be. The syrup is made from sap collected from maple trees. To get the sap, the tree trunks are tapped in late winter or early spring so the sap can flow out. The sap comes out clear, and it has a slightly sweet taste.
To turn sap into syrup, it is essentially cooked so the water evaporates, leaving the sweet stuff behind. Most sap is about 98% water, so you need a lot of sap to make syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup!
