End of Summer Botanical Cocktails
By Amanda Judd, FOAG Volunteer
Photo: Amanda Judd
Summer is coming to an end – but you can pretend otherwise by preserving edible blooms to use throughout fall and winter. Whether you’re upping your quarantini game or resisting the call of pumpkin spice in your baking, floral flavours can transport you back to a spring garden in an instant.
Always check that the blossoms you want to use are safe for consumption! You can use plant ID apps like PictureThis, Pl@ntNet, Plant.id, or Google Lens (which should be a feature on your camera app on Android phones) to ensure you have the right plant, and search to see if they’re toxic. Also consider whether they’ve had pesticides applied. If you don’t know, it’s safer to not use them.
Blossom Ice Cubes
The easiest way to preserve some beautiful blooms is by freezing them in ice cubes. They’ll add a pop of colour and whimsy to any drink.
I experimented a lot with blossom ice cubes this year. Forsythia and phlox were the perfect size to fit in a standard ice cube tray, while nasturtium and begonia were slightly too large and poked out of the ice (but if you have a larger ice cube tray, you could find better results).
Photo: Amanda Judd
For small flowers like lilac, flat blossoms like pansies or violets, or separated petals (try calendula, roses or echinacea), you can freeze the ice cubes in multiple phases. Put a blossom or two in each, fill the water just under halfway, then put it in the freezer and add the second layer of blooms and water. Sometimes I wouldn’t add a second layer of blossoms and would just use this to suspend a single blossom in the middle of the ice cube. Blossom ice cubes should freeze overnight before using.
Simple Syrups
You can turn any edible flower or plant into an infused simple syrup for cocktails. It’s appropriately named – it’s super simple. If you can handle boiling water on a stove, you can handle making simple syrup! In our Growing Up Green version, we use water from a kettle to soak the forsythia flowers overnight and honey as a liquid sugar to dissolve in the room temperature water. It’s a safer adaptation for the kids, but we still recommend parental supervision.
The grown up version is very similar, we’re just using more heat so we can fast forward dissolving the sugar and steeping the flowers. You will need more than you think for 1 cup of packed blossoms, so if it’s too late to use what you have in your garden or find fresh blossoms, try using dried blossoms like lavender, rose or hibiscus.
Botanical Simple Syrup
Ingredients
1 cup water
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed edible blossoms, washed and cleaned of all stems and leaves
Method
Remove all stems and leaves (this can be painstaking but it’s worth it, as these can make your syrup bitter) and wash. Remove any debris and insects.
Bring all ingredients to a boil over medium heat in a small saucepan, stirring to dissolve sugar. Simmer for one minute.
Remove from heat and set aside at least 30 minutes so the flowers can steep.
When cool, strain through a fine mesh strainer into a jar.
Your botanical syrup should keep in the fridge for at least a month.
Forsythia syrup cocktail: Spring Rush
If you made our forsythia syrup, consider using it in a bourbon, whiskey or tequila cocktail. Each of these will complement the honey flavour nicely. Even if you made forsythia syrup following the above recipe and didn’t add honey, you’ll notice a lovely honey-like flavour to the syrup. Found a recipe that calls for honey syrup, like a Bee’s Knees? Just use your forsythia syrup instead!
Forsythia is one of the first flowers to rush to bloom in the spring, serving as a valuable source of early food for pollinators hungry after winter. This cocktail is based off of a standard Gold Rush, with forsythia instead of honey syrup.
Ingredients
2 ounces bourbon
¾ ounce lemon juice
¾ ounce forsythia syrup
Method
Combine the bourbon, lemon juice and forsythia syrup in a shaker with ice.
Shake for ten seconds. Strain into a glass with ice.
Note: if you’re using blossom ice cubes, add them after so they don’t accidentally break apart in the shaker.
Photo: Amanda Judd
And, of course, there are many more uses for botanical simple syrups than just cocktails. Why not try:
Drizzle them over your pancakes or French toast
Mix a spoonful into a cup of herbal tea
Use them to flavour home-brewed kombucha
Add a dash to a homemade vinaigrette for your salad
Toss fresh fruit in a flavoured simple syrup to macerate them before using in a pavlova, over angel food cake, or on ice cream for delicious seasonal dessert.
Look at what you have on hand and experiment! You may find some edible blossoms make a stronger syrup than others, or some maintain their shape better in ice cubes.
