I adore the sweet floral note of rose, and it marries beautifully with lemonade. I like my lemonade quite tart, but my friends prefers it a bit sweeter. If you’re on other side of the fence, scale the Rose Syrup recipe up to 2 cups sugar, 2 cups water and 3/4 cups petals and add to taste. Leftover syrup can be used to flavour other cocktails, in tea, or even in plain yogurt (with strawberries – YUM!).
The rose petals I used were just petals and buds from the bulk tea section. Be sure that you get food-grade rose (not, like, potpourri or something) – they should either be sold as edible, culinary, food-grade or for tea.
Ingredients
Rose Syrup
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 1/2 cups filtered water
- 1/2 cup dried edible roses or herbal rose tea
Rose Lemonade
- 2 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1 batch Rose Syrup
- gin optional (start with 1 oz per highball glass, fill with ice and lemonade, stir)
- Lemon wheels to garnish glasses.
- Ice as desired
- Additional dried edible roses to garnish
Instructions
- Heat sugar, water and rose petals in a saucepan over a medium flame, stirring frequently, until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature (about an hour) then strain out rose petals, pressing on them to extract as much flavour as possible.
- In a large pitcher, combine lemon juice and rose syrup. Add lemon wheels and additional roses to the pitcher, along with ice, or use to garnish individual drinks.
- For the boozy version, add a shot of gin to individual highball glasses and top u