Crafting Wild Flower Syrups

Mid-Summer brings with it the heavy scents of so many beautiful edible wild flowers and one of the easiest ways to make the most of the season's offerings is to turn them into sweet and delicious flower syrups.

There are a wide variety of edible flowers that you can experiment with to make floral syrups, but the general rule of thumb is that the stronger the scent, the more intense the flavour of the syrup will be. Roses, Elderflowers and Lilacs lend themselves beautifully to being crafted into floral syrups, and are usually available in great abundance when found growing wild. Honeysuckle, Violets and Lavender are just a few others which make beautiful syrups.

Jump to Recipe

The recipe for the syrup only requires three ingredients: flowers, sugar and water, and it only takes about 20 minutes! Once you've made your syrup, you can have fun trying it out in so many different ways and you'll soon be wondering how you ever did without them. Poured over ice cream and pancakes, in tea, used in baking, in cocktails and mixed with sparkling wine.

The amount of flowers you'll need for will vary depending on which flower you'd like to use and the amount of syrup you'd like to make, but the more flowers you can forage, the more intense the flavour will be. There is no general rule of thumb. When you are foraging for your flowers, try and pick them on a warm sunny day, so the flowers aren't damp and the pollen hasn't been washed away by the rain.

---

Flower Syrups

Ingredients

Water

Sugar

Edible Flowers like Elderflowers, Rose petals, Lilacs, Dandelions.

1. If you can avoid it, try not to wash your flowers. You can leave them outside for an hour to allow all the little bugs and beetles to move away. Sort through them and discard any damaged or discoloured flowers. For Elderflowers you'll want to remove as much of the stalk as possible as it can create a bitter tasting syrup.

2. Add the flowers to a large pan and cover with water. I usually aim for about 1 Litre of water to begin with.

3. Bring the water to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to steep for between 12 and 24 hours.

4. Drain out the flowers using a muslin cloth or clean tea towel and discard the flowers.

5. At this point you'll need to weigh how much liquid you have as this will tell you how much sugar you'll need to add in the next step. You need to use a 1:1 ratio, so if you have 500g of water, you'll need to add 500g of sugar.

6. Add the water and sugar to a large pan and stir over a low heat until all the sugar has dissolved, then bring to the boil.

7. Simmer for about 20 minutes. While simmering you can prepare your jars or bottles by sterlising in a low oven for 15 minutes.

8. Once the syrup has thickened, turn off the heat and carefully pour into the sterlised bottles while they are still hot, and then seal and leave to cool.