This is what I think of as an “almost-recipe”. It is substantially right, but there is one thing it falls down on that makes the recipe fail: if you read the comments, people complain about it recrystallising.

Recrystallisation comes as no surprise, because there is nothing in the recipe to prevent it. Table sugar is sucrose and fructose bound together with a connecting bond (please note, this is a gross over-simplification – this level of molecular chemistry is outside the remit of this blog!) and this bond is very powerful. If you break the bond by use of heat, it will re-form itself as soon as the heat comes off which will re-form the sugar crystal. If you want to have a syrup at room temperature, you need to interfere with that bond, which you can do by introducing an impurity – glucose.

OK, so where do you get the glucose from? Honey, Golden Syrup, Golden Eagle syrup, and, if you absolutely have to…. from corn syrup (note: not high fructose corn syrup).

Now that I have established how to turn this from an almost-recipe into a real recipe, here’s the working version:

In a saucepan, combine the white sugar, brown sugar, glucose syrup, and water. Bring to a boil, and cook for about 3 minutes. Stir in the maple extract and vanilla, and remove form the heat. Let cool to room temperature and decant into glass jars or jugs. Serve lavishly over pancakes, waffles, or stirred into some home made yoghurt.