Moose Maple Butter -vs- Morrisons Maple Butter

A friend of mine started a business by mixing prime grade, Canadian, maple syrup with lightly salted butter and coming up with a delicious product which is wonderful spread on toasted bread, crumpets, pancakes and well everything!  It is called Moose Maple Butter and has been gaining a following over the past couple of years and is a firm favourite in our house for sure!

Moose Maple Butter is made with ‘Grade A’ Canadian Maple Syrup from a small local co-operative in Quebec and fresh British Butter (from Gower in SW Wales) with a little sea salt for good measure.  It is made in small batches. It is made for hot crumpets, toast or pancakes and should be a staple in every fridge across the land.

I was therefore surprised to be shopping in Morrisons recently to find they are now doing their own version of Maple Butter!  There was only one thing for me to do – do a comparison!

The first thing I noticed was the container size.  Moose Maple Butter comes in a 150 gm pot while Morrisons Maple Butter is in 175 gm pots.

The colour is slightly different – The Moose Maple Butter is slightly lighter which is consistent with using a better grade maple syrup which is lighter. The Morrisons product is darker which would be a feature of a darker syrup – the colour of the syrup is lighter at the beginning of the season and doesn’t need as much boiling,  the lighter the syrup the better the quality. Grade B syrup comes from sap from the end of the sap flowing season. The sap takes more boiling and ends up darker, sweeter, thicker and sometimes slightly grainy. (maple syrup fact – it takes approx 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup however this is dependent on the sugar content of the sap – there will be more at the end of the short season.)

Moose Maple Butter is also a smoother texture versus the slightly grainier Morrisons Maple Butter.

Now what about the taste! My grandsons were visiting and wanted pancakes for breakfast providing me with a perfect opportunity to do a taste test. There was a liking of the Morrisons Maple Butter but a resounding shout in favour of the Moose Maple Butter. I served each person with one pancake with Moose Maple Butter, one with Morrisons Maple Butter and one with Pure Maple Syrup.  Only I knew which one was which and the Moose Maple Butter was a clear favourite.

Morrisons Maple Buter is available at most large branches of Morrisons Supermarkets at a RRP of £1.80 and Moose Maple Butter can be found at Selfridges RRP £4.49, Partridges Kings Road London RRP £3.99 and fine food halls, independent delis and butchers (RRP £3.50-£4.75).

I also tried both of the maple butters on hot toast.  The Morrissons Maple Butter was very quick to melt into the toast and I must say the taste was not very strong making me search my tase buds for the maple flavour. The packaging was quite dark and didn’t stand out – I think the only reason I saw it was because I already knew Moose Maple Butter.

The Moose Maple Butter stayed thick on the hot toast (which I like) and had a much stronger flavour of the maple syrup.  I also liked the packaging of the Moose Maple Butter better – the clear plastic and purple branding makes it look lighter and more likely to catch your attention.

In order to make your own mind up I think you should try them both!

I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions and photographs are my own. No photographs may be reproduced in any form without my written permission.