Ingredients
- 1 cups sugar
- 1 cup water
Instructions
- Bring the water to boil in a medium sized saucepan over high heat.
- Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water, stirring constantly.
- Once the sugar has dissolved complete, reduce the heat to low, cover the saucepan and simmer for 5 minutes.
- Remove the saucepan from the heat and allow to cool completely.
- Once cool, transfer to a bottle and then store in the fridge.
- Use as required for your favorite drink recipes.
Simple sugar syrup is a quick and easy syrup mixture that anyone can make at home in no time at all. The syrup is versatile in its uses and is quite often used as a sweetener for many different drinks and cocktails.
What is sugar syrup?
Sugar syrup is a liquified version of sugar made from heating sugar and water together. Since the sugar is already in liquid form, it can much easier to mix into cold beverages. It also prevents undissolved sugar sitting at the bottom of your drink.
The sugar syrup ratio
Sugar syrup is so easy and inexpensive to make at home. The recipe here makes a 1:1 ratio of sugar vs water. Knowing this ratio allows you to essentially make any batch size you need. Depending on your requirements you may find a 2:1 ratio more appropriate. The 2:1 ratio will be thicker, and a lot sweeter as a final result.
Once you have made it, the syrup is best stored in glass jars. The syrup will easily keep for a good month when kept in the fridge.
Flavored Syrup
Many recipes will often use the syrup in its basic form, although you can quite easily infuse flavor into the syrup by adding additional as part of the cooking process. Check out our peach tea recipe for how peaches are used to make a peach flavored sugar syrup.
Other things you could infuse the syrup with include:
- vanilla pods
- ginger
- fresh herbs (such as basil, rosemary, mint)
- lemon
- limes
- eucalyptus
- jalapenos
- berries
Other uses for simple syrup
While being great for drinks, simple syrup has many other uses you might want to know about
- Moistening cakes – Elevate your next cake by either soaking the cake layers in syrup or by making small holes and pouring the syrup over the top. This is great for cakes that have a tendency to become dry.
- Glazing vegetables – try infusing the syrup with a herb infusion and then using them to glaze vegetables such as carrots
- Improving marinades – flavors such as ginger and citrus infused into the syrup are great for enhancing marinades
- Poaching fruit
- Making sorbet
- As a syrup – anytime you would use something like a maple syrup you can use this syrup instead. This includes over pancakes and your breakfast porridge. Try an orange infused syrup over these amazing orange choc-chip pancakes.
