LILAC HONEY

I wish you could smell my kitchen right now. The air is heavy and full with the intoxicating perfume of lilacs (Syringa vulgaris). There is something so romantic and dreamy about their fragrance which I look forward to every spring. This year, I wanted to try to capture their scent in some way, so that I could bottle it and consume it year-round. 

Happy to find out that the blossoms are edible, I decided to make a simple lilac-infused honey.

I harvested a bouquet of various types of lilacs and plucked the flowers from their bitter stems, filling a jar and packing it to the brim.

The honey I had on hand was a raw local wildflower honey which had crystallized. But it didn't matter, because once the honey was added to the flowers, it began to draw out the liquid through the process of osmosis, turning into a syrup. I sealed the lid tightly and allowed the flowers to steep overnight.

The next day, the contents of the jar had shrunk down to about a third and the flowers had floated up to the top. 

After straining out the flowers, what was left was a beautiful fragrant syrup, tasting distinctly floral and faintly spicy, with a little bit of bitterness softened by the sweetness of the honey.

Ingredients:

• lilac flowers, picked from stems
• local raw honey

Directions:

• fill jar with lilac flowers
• pour honey overtop
• allow to steep overnight
• once the flowers have risen to the stop, strain and preserve the syrup.