Sticky and sweet: 17 delicious ways with maple syrup – from pecan pie to a whisky sour

If you've been saving it to pour over pancakes, here are some brilliant new options, including bacon lollies, mouthwatering aubergines and some very grown up Rice Krispies

I've often fancied getting into the maple syrup game - buying some Canadian woods, drilling some holes, hanging some buckets under some spigots. It seems like a low-stress pastime, and you get summers off.

It turns out that they don't hang buckets under spigots much any more. These days, they run hundreds of feet of blue plastic piping between the trees, a giant sap collection network that feeds a big tank. Watching YouTube videos of men assembling these vast systems is also, it turns out, a pretty low-stress pastime.