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Violet Syrup Recipe
The woodlands are packed with violets just now and I was completely inspired by a Facebook post by a friend from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia. So determined to make a very purple lemonade with my granddaughter, and given all the time we have just now, we set out to gather as many flowers has we could. What bliss, to spend a couple hours in the woods picking flowers. It was just beautiful, filled also with carpets of yellow lesser celandine, patches of wood anemone, and the beginnings of tiny trilliums.
So here is the recipe from the Oak Spring chef…
Violet Syrup
2 cups lightly packed violet flowers
1/2 cup boiling water
white sugar (amount depends, see below)
Cover the violets with the boiling water and press down to be sure all the flowers are submerged. Leave these overnight. Next day strain all the liquid out, squeezing quite hard to get the very last bits of purple. Then measure this violet water into a pan and add 50:50 ratio of sugar. Heat to dissolve the sugar. The syrup is quite bluey purple, but you can add lemon to see a more pinky purple. We added a few spoons into our glasses of fresh-squeezed lemonade - see below the beautiful shade. Our next plan is to try our hand at violet tea cakes. And then there’s also talk of violet ice cream as the hens are laying loads just now.
