Lavender Liqueur
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This might be a polarizing opinion, but I just love floral flavors. I don’t get the soapy vibe that a lot of people often associate with rose water and other floral flavors. I mean have you ever tried candied violets?! They’re incredible!
I came up with this recipe for lavender liqueur when developing my Rusty Nail riff - The Manicured Nail. The floral notes blended beautifully with the Drambuie and really highlighted the floral notes of the scotch itself.
You’ll need the following equipment:
Ingredients:
To make the lavender liqueur I will be using 3 tablespoons of lavender tea. To preserve the color and to prevent any off flavors, I am going to remove as many stems and leaves as possible. I will be straining this later, so it doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect, but I like to remove as much as possible.
Once I’ve picked through the lavender, I’ll add it to a jar with 3 butterfly pea flowers. These flowers will give the liqueur a more purple color, and don’t have much flavor on their own. I went a bit overboard when I used them in my DIY purple gin a few months ago, so learning from my mistake, I will use much less this time around.
To the lavender and butterfly pea flowers, I’ll add one cup of vodka.
Now just screw on the lid, give it a shake to incorporate and let the lavender infuse. This really only needs a few hours, but I let mine infuse for a day.
Once the vodka has taken on a purple hue and beautiful lavender scent, strain it using a mesh sieve. Next, add a scant half cup of sugar and blend it for 5 minutes or so using an immersion blender. While you don’t need to use an immersion blender to dissolve the sugar, it just makes the process go so much faster. It will look kind of grey and opaque after blending but don’t worry, the color will settle back to a sumptuous dark purple. Just make sure all of the sugar is dissolved.
Once it’s all dissolved, go ahead and bottle it up. This will keep indefinitely and makes a worthy substitute to creme de violet.
I love having this liqueur on hand. It’s wonderful with gin and scotch, even rum too! I haven’t tried it with mezcal yet, but I could see them working very well together.
Lavender Liqueur:
3 tbs lavender flowers
1 cup of vodka
~1/2 cup of sugar
Method:
Infuse the lavender and butterfly pea flowers in the vodka for 2 hours or overnight.
Strain off lavender and butterfly pea flowers and add the sugar. Immersion blend until all sugar is dissolved.
Bottle the liqueur. This will keep indefinitely.
