
One of my rose bushes ( one I planted for Emma when she turned fourteen ) has so many blossoms on it this Spring. I am a real fan of highly fragrant roses, which I inherited from my mother, loving particularly the varietals with soft fruity scent, because when I pick a small jar of them and bring into the house, they just fill the room with a fragrant simplistic beauty. And this afternoon I made myself a rose soda, and drank it while calculating notes for a sweater design. From organic rose blossoms, fresh-picked from my garden early this morning while out watering, when it occurred to me to try to steep the petals in sugar syrup. And it doesn’t take long at all, really just a few hours, for its now the late afternoon, and I’m enjoying the most unusual refreshing drink, with delicious rose floral notes.
Here’s how I did it, I hope you try it too:
- Pluck petals off of roses, and place fresh petals in a pyrex liquid measure.
- Boil up some simple syrup, oh, like equal parts water to sugar.
- Pour the hot syrup over petals , stir, let steep for at least 4 hours. After a few hours you’ll really begin to taste the rose infusion, its pretty obvious, which always surprises me.
- Pour through sieve & funnel into a jar or bottle.





Pour a nice sparkling mineral water over ice, and splash a bit of the syrup to taste, and I think you’ll be impressed. I made an experiment with these two bottles of rose petal sugar syrup; one I used fresh petals and strained them out (as they turn a brown mushy look), but another I took dried petals I saved from a jar I keep in with my spices for cooking, the darker blossoms are a very strong old-fashioned rose scent, and they kept their color quite nicely, so I left them in the bottle, and there’s no question what the syrup is and it won’t be needing a label. You might be interested in checking out the post years ago when I made rose infused icecream; Sweet As A Rose from the archives. Rose notes indeed!
