Basil Simple syrup is a wonderful addition of flavor to sweeten your iced tea, lemonade, cocktails and popsicles. The fragrant basil adds a wonderful floral note to the simple syrup and makes a normally boring drink amazing!
Making a simple syrup is very easy. It involves adding equal parts water and sugar in a sauce pan and heating it until the sugar dissolves. This makes a beautiful homemade sweetener that you can enjoy anytime.
Simple syrups will last for a long time in your refrigerator. The little work that you go through in making it will not go to waste and you will thank yourself later on when you need it.
The ingredients in this basil simple syrup are:
- water
- sugar
- fresh basil leaves
How to make this basil simple syrup:
Add your sugar and water to a pot. 
Bring it to a boil until it is clear. Add fresh basil. 
Let basil steep.
When making this basil simple syrup, you are going to essentially steep your basil in the warm just off of the stove syrup. The longer you let the basil steep, the more basil flavor you are going to have so do not rush it.
This recipe requires a little planning ahead but as I mentioned, it will last a long time. This is a great excuse to double the recipe and have lots of extra simple syrup on hand for a later uses.
I use lots of this syrup in my homemade fruit popsicles. The basil flavor goes so well with so many fruits.
In our house, we also love using homemade simple syrups for our cocktails. Basil simple syrup added to a cocktail is just amazing! It makes for less work in making cocktails too because you can just mix a little gin or vodka with this syrup and top it off with soda water and you have a really quick cocktail that tastes amazing.
I will often make a few batches of different simple syrups and store them all in the back of the fridge for anytime we need them. From this basil simple syrup to my cherry simple syrup or even rhubarb simple syrup they all make for wonderful additions to drinks.
The fruit simple syrups can be made from frozen fruit so I do not have to worry about what is in season. Basil you can find all year round in the grocery store so it is also a great year round simple syrup.
I hope you give this delicious basil simple syrup a try. It is worth it!
If you are looking for some cocktails that use simple syrup:
- Aperol and soda
- Aperol Fizz
- Miami Vice
- Chartreuse and Gin cocktail (this basil simple syrup would be amazing with chartreuse)
- Spice Pear Cocktail
Any recipe that calls for simple syrup you can swap out for flavored simple syrups to really elevate the drink!
Basil Simple Syrup
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups of water
- 1 ½ cups of sugar
- large bunch of fresh basil leaves 15-20
Instructions
- Add water and sugar to a medium pot over medium heat
- Warm the mixture until the sugar dissolves.
- Once the sugar dissolves, remove from the heat and add your fresh basil leaves and place a lid over top.
- Allow to cool with the basil leaves steeping in the simple syrup.
- When cooled, remove basil leaves and pour your syrup into a container and use right away or refrigerate.
Fran says
This was the best simple syrup I ever made!