The Secret to Making Amazing Lilac Sugar

Last Updated on June 20, 2024 by Michelle

Seriously, today I’m gonna tell you how to make your own lilac sugar that can’t be beat. You’ll love sweetening your tea with it, sprinkling some over your next cupcakes, or using it to bake scones or sugar cookies. And it’s about the easiest thing I’ve ever made.

In fact, the secret about lilac sugar? It’s so easy anyone could do this… which makes me wonder why it’s not more common. It’s so easy, folks, it almost seems silly to write about it. I could almost say “grab some sugar, add lilac blossoms and enjoy.”

And of course it makes me sad that lilacs are only in bloom for such a short window of time each year.

Why I love lilacs

Last spring, after I started making dozens of jars of lilac simple syrup, a jar of thicker lilac syrup, lilac-infused honey, and–my absolute favorite kombucha ever–lilac blueberry kombucha, well I started wondering if I could harvest lilac blooms for a longer season.

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If you love lilacs (or a great history story!), you’ll love reading this detail I recently learned about lilacs.

Or here’s another great story about an old house. (I happen to love both–great stories and old houses.)

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I discovered this awesome online nursery (affiliate link) that has a wonderful selection of some hard-to-find items, so I decided to snoop around their site and see if there were lilac bushes that bloom at a slightly different time than my own, so I’d at least have some blooming on the homestead for a longer window each spring. Well I could NOT believe it when I discovered that Nature Hills Nursery had something called a Bloomerang Lilac Bush. Folks, this lilac blooms multiple times every year! Hello! I knew I needed this lilac.

I couldn’t believe how wonderfully packaged my bloomerangs were when they arrived on my farmhouse porch. And they were so mature! I had them in the ground within a day and have been longing for next spring already. I can’t wait to see if they bloom their first year and how long and how often they bloom. I’ll keep you posted.

But I am sidetracked, as usual… back to the sugar…

How to harvest your lilac blooms

It all starts with lilac blooms, of course, preferably ones at the height of the season, lush and full. Gently remove the bloom from the stem. If you just give them a slight tug, the bloom slides right off, detaching from the little green sepal at its base, and leaving the yellow pistil behind.

I used a few cups of blooms, but it’s really up to you and how vibrant or subtle of a flavor you want.

How to make lilac sugar

I layered white sugar, interspersed with layers of lilac blooms, in a quart-sized Ball jar.

EDIT to add: I wrote this many years ago, before I overhauled my kitchen and removed refined sugar. See my list of favorite sugars I use in my kitchen now here, on my list of My Favorite Ingredients.

I left a few inches open at the top, to allow for daily vigorous shaking, and put a lid on tightly.

I think next spring I’ll experiment with substituting my maple sugar in place of the refined sugar, and I’ll let you know what Maple Lilac Sugar tastes like. In fact, leave a comment below if you try any alternative to white, refined sugar that you like in the lilac sugar; I’m trying to move away from using refined sugar when I can and substitute with all-natural sugar–especially maple–whenever I can.

I placed the quart jar on my counter, where I’d remember to give it a good toss-and-tumble shake every day for a week or so. It was interesting to watch the sugar and the blooms change over time. The moisture and oils from the blooms interspersed into the sugar, which of course is what makes it so doggone delicious, and the blooms shriveled up to almost nothing.

After about a week, I poured the sugar out onto a baking sheet and let it air dry, to get rid of some of the moisture, so it would keep well on my counter for months (if of course I actually manage to not use it all up in a few weeks). At that point I could have simply poured it back in my jar. But I decided to run it through the food processor and incorporate the dried lilac in better with the sugar. A few spins, an easy pour into one of my favorite mason jars through a funnel, and, voila, my own honest-to-goodness heavenly lilac sugar. Right there in a jar on my counter beside my maple sugar. (If you’d like all the secrets to making amazing maple sugar, you’ll want to snag my ebook, Make Maple Sugar. The only difficult part to all of this is choosing which one I’ll use each time I want a special cup of tea.

 

How to use your lilac sugar

Using it in my cup of tea is my favorite way to enjoy lilac sugar–especially camomile tea or wild raspberry hibiscus. In case you’re wondering, Stash makes my favorite raspberry hibiscus. (affiliate link.)

It’s crazy yummy in baking too–think lilac shortbread or lilac sugar cookies. Mmmmmmm. Hint: to keep my lilac sugar cookies extra chewy, I only use yolk, no egg white. Bonus: Check out my subscriber library for my favorite-of-all-time sugar cookie recipe, that of course uses lilac sugar. The recipe is in my upcoming book, Sweet Maple, too. (Not a subscriber? That’s super easy. Go here.)

Or sprinkle it on top of fresh-cut berries for an extra special dessert. (I love this lid with this insert that I use on my mason jars for my maple and my lilac sugars. Go here for more details on those and other fun lids I love on my mason jars.)

You could even give beautiful little jars of lilac sugar as gifts or wedding favors!

But honestly, if I’m gonna use it in baking, my first thought is dusting it over my grandmom’s blueberry cake.

Then Katie Koskewich, a reader in Manitoba, Canada, blew my mind with yet another great idea. She uses her lavender sugar (the next floral sugar i’m gonna make, for sure) in an egg wash. Just beat one egg and a few teaspoonfuls of lilac sugar and brush it over a pie before baking. Mmmmmmm. Lavender and pies. It doesn’t get much better than that folks. Plus, Katie and I, up here in the cold north, need a little bit of summer on our pies all winter long, am I right, Katie? 😉

If you’d like to upgrade your lilac blueberry cake with maple, you’ll want the amazing recipe you’ll find in A Sweet Taste, one of numerous–totally free–ebooks you’ll find in my resource library, open all the time to all of my subscribers. Sign up here and download A Sweet Taste right away:

 

And speaking of unique sugars, I’ve discovered I love my stir-fry seasoned with maple syrup. Yeah, totally random, but we just had this for dinner and oh. my. goodness! I told Holly, my awesome editor, that I had to add this one in at the last minute to my manuscript for Sweet Maple.

And the stir fry was delicious with some homemade kombucha, but what isn’t? My favorite kombucha? I make it with lilac simple syrup. Grab my recipe for Lilac Blueberry Kombucha right here.

If you’re in the market for your own lilac bush, I absolutely cannot think of anyone I’d recommend more than NatureHillsNursery.com. As the world’s largest online nursery they have the most amazing selection of wonderful, heritage, hard-to-find-elsewhere plants and trees. Yet they’re as friendly as a neighborhood nursery, which works out great for me, since I haven’t even seen a neighborhood in almost 5 years, since we moved to rural New England. And their horticulturalists are super knowledgable and actually get back to you with in depth answers to your questions.

By the way, I’m certain many other edible fragrant flowers make great sugars, from lavender to roses, what have you tried? Please share! I am always in the market for a new obsession.

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“Lilacs are exuberantly purple and perfumed, and cherry trees fragrant with blossoms. Oh, get up, dear friend, my fair and beautiful lover – come to me!” Song of Solomon 2:13

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