Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Black Locust Recipe - Black Locust Flower Syrup


Black locust infused sugar
Making syrups to mix into drinks and dilute with seltzer is a common Hungarian tradition. Ripe fruits or fragrant flowers become the flavor components for the sugar syrup, ascorbic acid is added as a preservative and tart flavor booster. We get powdered ascorbic acid (vitamin C) at GNC in an 8 oz bottle and it lasts for a long time. Here we used black locust flowers (Robinia pseudoacacia) as the flavoring agent, and mixed it with seltzer for a refreshing drink. Robert rims the glass with sugar infused with more black locust flowers for an even more fragrant flavor. The syrup is added to seltzer or water at a 1:7 ratio to make the final drink.

Black Locust Flower Syrup                       makes about 4+ cups of syrup

2 1/4 c. water
3 c. sugar
2 c. packed black locust flowers
3 T ascorbic acid powder

1. Heat the water to boiling and add the sugar. Remove from the heat, and stir until the sugar dissolves.
2. Allow the sugar syrup to cool to 80°F, then add the black locust flowers. Let the flowers steep in the syrup for 24 hours.
3. Filter out the flowers and give them a squeeze to extract all the flavor.
4. Remove 1 cup of the syrup, and warm it up. Add the ascorbic acid, stirring to dissolve it. Pour the syrup back into the rest, mixing well. Store in airtight containers.

Black Locust flower cluster

3 comments:

suzi ballenger said...

Wonderful! Thank you for posting!

Ayala Moriel said...

Thanks so much for the recipe! I had no idea these beautifully scented flowers were edible. Just made some this evening :-)
Any ideas for cocktails with the syrup once it's ready? Or would you just add to sparkling water/soda?

The 3 Foragers said...

We generally just add our syrups to seltzer. We don't have much experience with cocktails, but I am sure these syrups would work well in recipes that call for syrups.