Infusions For Cocktails: Flower Syrup Recipes

This week our kitchen has become a mixologist's haven - flavour after flavour of cocktail syrup bulge from the crowded fridge door, the bottles cheek by jowl with cherry jam, mustards and chilli bean paste. I'm busy scrabbling around for small bottles, sniffing pans infusing, tidying split bags of sugar. There's little that hasn't been infused. From Sichuan peppercorns, to rose, jasmine, chillies, and hibiscus.

And these colourful bottles are not just great for cocktail syrups - I'll use them in ice-creams, to drizzle over cakes, stir into butter cream, ganache, or - just simply - to mix with a little fizz.

Infusing is pretty much the same as making a cup of tea. To work out the initial quantities, I weighed a teabag, saw how much water is in a cup, and then swapped out the tea leaves for pretty much anything else - and hey presto - you've got something quite interesting. Remember the flower syrup recipe needn't be a concentrate if you're adding the syrup directly into a drink - it wants a good, though not overpowering flavour.

As with oranges in marmalade making, if the sugar is added too early, the fruit or flowers won't soften. You may prefer to keep some of the petals when the liquid is strained and add them back into the syrup, especially for use with cakes. For cocktails I discard the flowers - except perhaps with hibiscus where the flower heads look very pretty in the base of a glass of sparkling wine. If the flower syrup is to keep in the fridge for more than a few days, add 3-5g citric acid per litre to help preserve it for longer.

It's useful to keep the proportions in the flower syrup recipe as a 1:1 ratio of liquid to sugar, i.e. a "simple syrup" then they can be used in any cocktail recipe that calls for a syrup.  The first cocktail created followed the classic cocktail rule-of-thumb:

2 parts spirit : 1 part lime or lemon juice : 1 part simple sugar syrup

Let's call her a Rosy Lady: 50ml gin, 25ml lime juice, 25ml rose syrup. 15ml of egg white would have been a good addition. The rose syrup replaces the grenadine in a classic pink lady - pale pink, light, refreshing, with a hint of rose - and just a little more grown up. Stunning on a hot day. I'd love to pour another now.