Category: Garden

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Lilac & lime simple syrup

Lilac & lime simple syrup. Delicate sweet + citrus floral flavor, nice with gin and tonic (got to keep that malaria away), would also be nice with seltzer water. I’ll have 9 little bottles at the art fair Saturday.

I meant to make this earlier — by the time I got around to it, most of my purple lilac petals had fallen, so I ended up with mostly pink petals, which made a sort of brown syrup.

Usually, if you add citrus to lilac syrup, it’ll turn purple, but I think the pink is just not strong enough color for that, so I ended up with a sort of melon-y color? Still pretty, though it doesn’t particularly shout ‘lilac’ when you look at it. 🙂

Some recipes recommend adding a few blueberries to get a purple color — I didn’t have any on hand, but maybe I’ll try that next year. This recipe suggests that, for example: https://www.havocinthekitchen.com/lilac-syrup/

They also suggest uses: “Think of fancy cocktails, refreshing lemonades, or over your ice cream. Enjoy with pancakes, crepes, and French toasts. Besides, it would be great as a part of desserts, soak cake, topping for your oatmeal, and a dressing for your fruit salads.”

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Kavi helped me collect and prep some edible flowers

Kavi helped me collect and prep some edible flowers — I’m going to make some little jars of flower confetti to sell at What’s Blooming on Harrison. So far, we have cornflower, pansies, peonies, dianthus, and even a few early roses. Tomorrow, planning to add fuchsia, dahlia, hibiscus, and maybe nasturtiums — have to check if any of mine are blooming yet. Usually these would just take a few days to air-dry, but I’ll likely pop them in the dehydrator tomorrow to speed up the process. Some of the tasty things you can use dried edible flowers for: herbal teas, cocktail garnish mixes, infused oils, infused vinegar, cake decorating, garnishing your meals, botanical salts, and infused spirits. And then of course there’s arts and crafts, bath bombs, hand scrubs, body balms, etc.