A silent vlog about harvesting and preparing lilacs for medicinal honey, delicious donuts, and refreshing lemonade. Recipes below. Thanks for visiting.

LILAC HONEY

4 cups lilac florets
2 cups honey

Wash and dry fresh picked lilacs. Remove florets from stems. Fill a glass jar with florets. Add honey slowly, removing air bubbles by tapping jar on a surface. Keep adding honey until the jar is full. Place the jar in a sunny spot and flip the jar upside down once a day. Ready to use in a week. The longer it stays the more lilac essence it will hold.

LILAC DONUTS

275 ml warm milk
75 ml melted butter
2 eggs
15 g active dry or instant yeast
60 g sugar
500 g flour
3 g salt
3 g nutmeg
Pinch of cardamom
Oil for frying

Mix milk, butter, eggs, yeast, and sugar. Add flour, salt, nutmeg and cardamom. Knead the dough for 10 minutes. It will be a very sticky/soft dough. The more you knead the less sticky it will be. Oil a large bowl and place dough in to rest for 2 hours. After the 2 hours, remove dough from bowl and cut into logs. Cut 22 -24 pieces or weigh on a scale 45-50 grams each piece. Make each piece of dough into a small ball. Flatten each ball with the palm of your hand and cut a hole in the middle with a very narrow cookie cutter. Cover the dough for a few minutes while you heat up the oil. Heat any vegetable oil in a pot and fry the donuts until slightly golden on each side. Use a chop stick to turn the dough and remove from oil onto a wire rack.

DONUT GLAZE

50 ml melted butter
50 ml milk
5 g vanilla
200 g powdered sugar

Heat butter and milk in a small pot. Add to a bowl, then add vanilla and sifted powdered sugar. Whisk until smooth, making sure no sugar clumps remain. Place freshly fried donuts face down into the glaze and remove with a chop stick. Place unglazed side on a wire rack allowing excess glaze to drip down. Garnish with washed and dried lilac florets. Let sit for 30 minuted for the glaze to set.

LILAC LEMONADE

3 lemons
1/4 cup lilac infused honey
3-4 cups water
8-10 stem lilacs
1 tablespoon blueberries (optional)
Ice

Add the juice of 3 lemons and lilac honey, whisk well until combined. Add ice, lilacs, blueberries (optional) and water. Mix with a spoon and serve. The blueberries add a hint of color. This is helpful if you are serving the lemonade right away as there won’t be enough time for the natural hue of the lilacs to show. If you are planning on serving within 15- 30 minutes, the blueberries won’t be necessary as the lilacs will infuse into the lemonade.