Recipe: Raspberry Syrup

The berries just keep on coming! Friday, my husband and I picked about 20 cups of raspberries from the canes in our backyard. That’s on top of several cups each of the past few days, some of which we’ve munched and some we’ve given to others. A basket sent to my mother led to a new recipe for using raspberries: Raspberry Syrup.

Here’s the method: Take about 3 cups of cleaned berries and put them in a saucepan with 1/2 cup of water and 2 cups of sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil, mashing the berries as you go. Once the mixture is boiling hard, let it cook for three minutes. While the mixture cooks, set up your straining operation. I used a colander lined with cheese cloth set over another saucepan. After the mixture has boiled, pour the syrup through the strainer. Gently push on it to extract as much juice as possible — this may take an hour or more to get all the goodness out — while leaving behind the seeds.  The resulting liquid may be thin, so put it on the heat again and let some of the water boil away. But don’t go too long or you will end up with raspberry jelly (which is not all bad). The syrup would be wonderful on pancakes, but I couldn’t wait and served it up over some ice cream.