Lavender Honey Syrup for Cakes and Cocktails

This simple lavender honey syrup is great for drinks, cakes, or breakfast. It has a delightful floral flavor just like coffee shops and bartenders use!

If you love lavender, then this honey simple syrup will be your new favorite condiment. Add it to drinks like coffee, iced tea, or cocktails for a light hint of sweetness and summertime.

What Kind Of Honey?

Any kind of honey that you have on hand is great for this lavender honey syrup recipe. If you love the floral flavor and want to boost it, use lavender honey which has its own hint to it.

Additionally, orange blossom, wildflower, and regular clover honey all taste wonderful.

What Kind of Lavender?

I don't recommend just picking any lavender from a nearby plant because most lavender is ornamental, not edible. Not that this means it'll make you sick, but more that edible culinary lavender has better flavor for cooking.

If you have fresh lavender, you'll need twice as much of the lavender flowers as you do dried lavender. Pick the lavender right after the flowers have bloomed for the most aromatic impact.

If you use dried lavender for this lavender honey syrup, choose culinary lavender from the munstead, hidcote, or lady plants. These all have the most flavor and are less likely to make your syrup bitter.

How To Make It

Unlike standard simple syrups, this lavender honey syrup gets its sweetness from honey not white sugar. This creates unique challenges for maintaining quality of the honey.

To prevent any crystallzation, but allow the honey to melt into a cohesive syrup, don't boil the honey itself.

Instead, start with just the water in a small saucepan over medium high heat. Bring it to a boil then turn off the heat. Add the lavender then stir in the honey until completely dissolved

Let the lavender steeped syrup cool until it is at room temperature. Then strain it through a fine mesh sieve lined with cheesecloth. Store it in an airtight glass container in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

Why Is It Bitter?

If your lavender honey syrup is bitter, that usually means one of two things. Either you boiled your lavender in the water and overcooked it, or you used ornamental lavender.

If neither of these things pertain to your particular batch of honey lavender simple syrup, try again with different dried lavender.

How Long Is It Good For?

Lavender honey syrup should stay refrigerated in an airtight container for up to two weeks.

Even though sugar is a preserver, it still molds when not used up. If it has been longer than two weeks, it is unlikely that you will smell something funky with the syrup. Instead, you may find a thin white film has collected on the edges.

Lavender Honey Syrup

Any place that you use honey, you can use this lavender steeped alternative. It tastes wonderful in coffee, tea, cocktails, or even as way to moisten cakes.

For some more lavender inspiration, I recommend trying:

Happy Cooking! 🙂