Edible Landscape

 

Spring is a time to wake the senses, and what better way than with a pop of soft, fresh florals? 

 

Floral cocktails are a tricky lot, but fresh lilacs are easy incorporate into recipes, especially when using a lilac-infused sugar. Lilac blossoms impart a most delicate pale pink-purple hue to a simple syrup and a subtle, spellbinding scent to match. 

 

As soon as you harvest/snip the lilac branches, you’ll want to gently pull the blossoms off of each sepal (the small green leafy jacket and woody stem at the base of the blossom) and infuse the florets into loose sugar to capture the vibrant floral notes of the blossoms. The lilac sugar preparation and a gentle infusion of the blossoms (read: don’t boil the syrup) ensures soft layers of botanicals in the syrup that avoid any lingering bitter/acerbic notes of cooked petals. 

To enhance the tint of the simple syrup, I’ve got a recipe hack that works: Just add three to four frozen or fresh blueberries to the mixture when it’s on the stove. 

 

Use the lilac syrup as a lively base for a spritz or a non-alcoholic soda, and garnish with lilac petals to bolster the floral palate. A fresh squeeze of lemon boosts the essence of lilac, as is the case with most floral syrups, so whenever you pick edible blossoms for a syrup, consider picking up an extra lemon or two at the market. 

 

Because lilac season is so fleeting, it’s best to harvest the blossoms when they are perfectly fresh versus waiting a week or two into the season. And I understand that it’s not always, well, spring. It’s worthwhile to include a recipe hack from a lovely friend and writer, Thea Engst, Providence-based author of Drink Like a Bartender, Spirits of the Tarot and Nectar of the Gods, who shares that “one of the easiest ways to add flowery flair to any drink is with a few drops of rose water. It smells and tastes like fresh rose petals and just one or two drops will give your cocktail those soft, sweet, fragrant notes.” 

 

For those just stepping into the garden of edible blossoms and floral cocktails, she advises that rose water can be a nice gateway into the kingdom of flowery drinks.