Make Your Own Lilac Sugar and Lilac Syrup

Like some other flowers, lilacs are edible. In this post, I’ll show you how to make your own lilac syrup and lilac sugar! It’s very easy, and they are a great way to add a lovely floral note to your teas and baked goods. 

All the Beautiful Flowers-

The lilacs are blooming! The lilacs are blooming!!!!! Can you tell this makes me excited? I love cooking with florals, and lilacs are a favorite of mine not only to look at but to consume, and smell their fragrant perfume all over my house.

It’s pretty hard not to feel uplifted when you smell and look at flowers. I am so thankful that the lilacs are on time this year, I was worried that our winter snowfall might delay their arrival. This means I get to share with you how to make your own lilac syrup and lilac sugar, and show you my foolproof and easy methods!

Nothing says Spring quite like the scent of lilacs, and it is such a shame how fleeting their perfume and beautiful appearance are. 

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Florals in Cooking

In my opinion lilac is much like lavender, meaning that it tastes just how it smells, if that makes any sense. But, lilac is much more subtle than a flavor like lavender. When using an ingredient like lavender for instance, you really have to watch it because you can go from zero to “hand soap flavored dish” in a flash. Lilac is much more forgiving, and I find the more the merrier to ensure the flavor comes through.

Making sugar and syrup from lilacs is extremely easy, and very rewarding. The only time consuming part of making the syrup and sugar is trimming the blossoms off the stems. The rest is easy. Personally, I find the task a bit relaxing. 

Bonus: you get to do even more relaxing while drinking so many cups of lilac syrup sweetened tea, and reading a few chapters of that book you’ve been meaning to catch up on (I think I may have just outed myself a bit there, not doing as much reading lately as I would like).

Important Note

Be sure to get your lilacs from a trusted source. Because you will be consuming them, it’s imperative that you get blooms that have not been treated with chemicals or pesticides. Growing your own is wonderful. If you don’t grow your own, talk to a friend, neighbor, or local nursery and make sure their lilacs have not been sprayed with anything before using. 

Another noteworthy tip is that it’s best to use scissors to trim off the blossoms. By using your fingers to pull them from the steam, you will run the risk of getting the green stems in your syrup or sugar, and those can impart a rather bitter flavor if you get too much of them in there. The best way I have found to prevent that is to cut them off with scissors right above the green part of the stem.

Helpful Tips for the Lilac Syrup

The process of making the syrup is pretty straightforward. For the syrup, there are two common methods of preparation. Either placing your blossoms in the boiling water directly, or putting them in a jar and pouring the hot simple syrup inside on top of the blossoms. I like to do both. 

In the saucepan I place a good handful with the sugar and water. Then I pack my jar full of blossoms and pour everything in over the top. I let my syrup sit with the blossoms still in the jar for at least two days. 

The act of pouring the hot syrup over the jar of blossoms will cause the blooms on the very top to brown. This will give the syrup a little color. You could also throw a few blueberries or blackberries in your saucepan with the water and sugar to add some purple tint. Just be sure to remove them before pouring the syrup into the jar.

Tips For the Lilac Sugar

The act of pouring the hot syrup over the jar of blossoms will cause the blooms on the very top to brown. This will give the syrup a little color. You could also throw a few blueberries or blackberries in your saucepan with the water and sugar to add some purple tint. Just be sure to remove them before pouring the syrup into the jar.

This method is great because once it is ready to use you don’t have to fish dead blossoms out of your sugar. Now they are safely contained in the cheesecloth bundles to be discarded when ready, leaving nothing behind but the sugar! Check out the instructions below for more details.

Alternative Method: you are more than welcome to layer the blossoms right in the jar with the sugar and skip the cheesecloth baggies. The flowers become preserved because they dry as the sugar pulls the moisture out of the blossoms. If you want to keep the blossoms intact in the sugar, you can bake them right into your baked goods if you want! They can stay in the jar of sugar because they are edible, unless you don’t want them in the finished product.

Serving Suggestions and Other Uses

I love the lilac syrup in a cup of chamomile tea. The flavors really complement each other nicely!  It could be used in other teas as well and it’s quite a treat when used to sweeten hot cocoa. The sugar could also be used to sweeten tea, or in baking. 

You can experiment by replacing regular granulated sugar with the lilac sugar in scones or pound cake as a place to start. With a pound cake, you could poke holes in the top after it’s baked and drizzle some of the lilac syrup over the top. Yum! 

If you enjoy making truffles, the lilac sugar would be great to roll your truffles in (especially if they are white chocolate). If you want to take your macerated berries to a whole new level, try using lilac sugar instead. They give a beautiful floral note to the fruit. 

I hope you enjoy trying various ways to use Lilac Sugar and Lilac Syrup. They also make a great Mother’s Day gift! Utilizing florals in your cooking is a fantastic way to inject some variety into your time in the kitchen. I hope you give this a try, and that you enjoy the results.

For another great idea utilizing lilacs, try my recipe for London Fog with Lilac Milk. Its a good one!

If you tried this recipe, I’d love to hear how it turned out! Just leave a rating or comment below, or take a picture and tag me @thecoppertable on Instagram, or share with your friends on social media! If you have not signed up for my weekly newsletter, you can do that below. I have all sorts of exclusive content just for newsletter subscribers, and I’d love for you to join. Happy Cooking!