Intense Natural Flavours with Homemade Berry Syrup

– When making for instance a strawberry or raspberry flavoured frosting – like the buttercream frosting for my raspberry slice cupcakes – I like to use a homemade berry syrup to add flavour instead of aroma or jam. That way I know exactly what’s in my frosting, avoiding chemicals and artificial substances while getting a lovely natural and intense flavour 

For this recipe I have sligthly modified a recipe for wild berry syrup from the famous Danish online cookbook Karolines Køkken. You can use whatever berries you like; but when choosing berries with seeds such as raspberries you may want to strain your syrup. Use a spoon to gently push the syrup back and forth in a fine mesh strainer and repeat 2-3 times to get rid of as many seeds as possible so that they don’t add unwanted bitterness and spoil the lovely smoothness of your frosting 

Recipe

• 1/2 vanilla pod
• 200 g frozen berries of your choice
• 50 g sugar
• 2 tbsp water

1. Cut the vanilla pod in half, open it with a knife and scrape out the seeds. On the chopping board carefully mix the seeds with a little sugar, pushing and pressing the mixture back and forth with the tip of the knife until the seeds are separated and well mixed with the sugar.
2. Combine berries, water, sugar, vanilla seeds and the empty half of the vanilla pod in a small saucepan, put the lid on and set over low heat. Allow to boil for about 5 minutes. Take of the lid and boil down the mixture over high heat, stirring occasionally, until you have about 3/4 cup left.
3. In case you still have large pieces of berry in your mixture – usually you shouldn’t, byt strawberries can be persistent – use a hand mixer to smooth the mixture out. If needed, strain your syrup to get rid of seeds.
4. Keep in the fridge in an airtight, sterilized container – I use a washed and boiled jam jar – and my experience is that it will keep for 2-4 weeks.