There's no butter in maple butter… the name simply refers to the texture. To make it, grade "A" syrup from this year's harvest is combined with an equal quantity of last year's grade "A" syrup in order to prevent lumps from forming. The syrup is boiled in a steel kettle (galvanized won't work) whose rim has been greased with a little butter to prevent the syrup from boiling over. When it reaches 112° C (233.6° F), the kettle is set into the snow to reduce the temperature to 4.4° C (40° F), then it is placed into hot water to raise the temperature back to 15.5° C (60° F). The maple butter is then put into a mixer to achieve the proper texture. This seemingly-simple process is actually fairly tricky, since one degree above or below and you end up with soft or hard sugar instead of maple butter.