Homemade strawberry syrup is boldly flavored with fresh strawberries, honey, and a touch of warm spice for a versatile and silky smooth syrup recipe. Great as an ingredient in desserts like poke cake or as a perfect strawberry simple syrup for iced tea and cocktails, this naturally flavored syrup is so easy to make on the stovetop!
It’s a Monday morning, coming off a scorcher of a weekend. Let’s stick with something a) easy, b) with a lot of inactive time, and c) can help you make icy cold fruity drinks.
Works for me.
This strawberry syrup recipe uses fresh strawberries for natural strawberry flavor. No fake flavorings here. Plus look at that bright color! All from the strawberries.
Along with water, honey, sugar, and a teeny tiny bit of ground cinnamon, those strawberries transform into a versatile, fruity ingredient that can add flavor to a variety of beverages and beyond.
How to make strawberry syrup
This strawberry simple syrup recipe follows the easy method I use to make make most of my flavored simple syrups. The exception being a syrup with fresh ginger slices, as I add those while boiling to really extract the flavor. Love that ginger bite in strawberry ginger margaritas, lemon ginger iced green tea, sparkling ginger lemonade…
But I digress. Strawberries don’t require that level of boiling to boldly flavor (and color!) a simple syrup, making this process even easier.
A simple syrup at its base is incredibly, well, simple. Equal parts sugar and water are brought to boil in a saucepan. The sugar dissolves and you’re done. Simple syrups are the choice over straight-up sugar when sweetening a cold beverage, as you won’t be left with a gritty granulated sugar texture that won’t dissolve in a chilly drink.
So that’s where we start. One change I nearly always do when I make a simple syrup is to switch out some of the sugar for honey. That totally works in a simple syrup. This adds a honey flavor I just love in drinks. Plus it complements fruit flavors SO well when making a fruity simple syrup.
In addition to the water, sugar, and honey in the saucepan, this homemade strawberry syrup recipe includes ground cinnamon. Just a little pinch – about one-sixteenth of a teaspoon! It adds a wonderfully present-yet-subtle warming flavor to the syrup, that along with the strawberries and honey, makes it seem fancier than it is.
I like to add a bit of cinnamon when I make easy, no-can strawberry chia seed jam. Same great, spiced result.
Once all of that comes to a boil, remove the saucepan from the heat and add the strawberries. Mash them up using a potato masher, a drink muddler, or whatever kitchen utensil you have that will do the job. Cover the pan and let everything steep for an hour or so.
What’s left is to pour the strawberry syrup through a fine sieve. Really press the mash into the sieve to release as much liquid syrup as you can. You might have to clear out the sieve of the solids once or twice during this process to free up room.
And that you go! Simply refrigerate until ready to use.
How to use this strawberry syrup recipe!
I’ve barely scratched the surface in all the different ways you can use this strawberry syrup, but here are some ones to start with.
- Use this in iced teas, cocktails, and other cold beverages as both a flavor boost and a sweetener.
- I don’t have my own recipe for this one quite yet, but have you considered using strawberry syrup in a poke cake? After forgetting about a store-bought angel food cake in my pantry for a few days (OY), I gave it a ‘refresh’ poke-cake style with strawberry syrup. Love how that technique adds moisture and flavor.
Other than that, try out this syrup in all the other ways you use simple syrups. Drizzling over a fruit salad, perhaps on pancakes or waffles if you’re not feeling maple, etc.
Variations on strawberry syrup
You can change up the fruit as you please! Either replace it all, or substitute in a portion of other fruit to make a mixed berry syrup. I’m thinking raspberries and blackberries in particular would be excellent choices. Making a syrup with raspberries is just as easy and work so well in this honey raspberry iced tea recipe!
The other area you may wish to experiment with is the honey. This recipe uses half honey and half granulated sugar for sweetness. With this ratio, you can definitely taste the honey in the end result syrup, but it isn’t overwhelming.
If you’re looking to avoid the granulated sugar entirely you can substitute in an equal amount of honey. That will work for a simple syrup. So for this recipe it would be one cup of water to one cup of honey, no sugar. While I haven’t tried it that way with this particular strawberry syrup recipe, I’d be prepared for a bold honey flavor!
Recipe notes:
- This recipe yields about 18 oz of syrup. The recipe is pretty scalable, so feel to adjust the ingredient quantities down if you don’t need that much.
- Sub in other berries for some of the strawberries for a mixed berry syrup.
- The tiny bit of ground cinnamon adds a subtle flavor that bumps this strawberry syrup recipe up a notch. However if it’s not going to mesh with how you plan to use this or if you’re not a fan of cinnamon, you can definitely leave it out.
Homemade Strawberry Syrup with Honey
Ingredients
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 cup honey
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/16 tsp ground cinnamon
- 16 oz fresh strawberries, hulled and chopped (about 2 1/2 cups)
Instructions
- Add water, honey, sugar, and ground cinnamon to a medium saucepan set over high heat. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is combined.
- Once boiling, remove the saucepan from the heat and add the strawberries.
- Mash the strawberries well using a potato masher or muddler. Cover the pan and let everything steep (off heat) for one hour.
- After steeping, pour the strawberry syrup through a fine sieve, pressing down on the mashed strawberry mixture in the sieve with the back of a spoon to release as much liquid as possible. Store syrup in the refrigerator.
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