Homemade clear white syrup

Name: Homemade clear white syrup
Prep time: 5 min
Total time: 15 min

March 19, 2023

Prep 5 min Total 15 min

A selection of recipes. © kvalifood.com

Video recipe - You often need a syrup as a base ingredient in other recipes. The is a short presentation about how to make your own syrup. I present one basic recipe and show 4 variations that you can use as an ingredient in other recipes.

Ingredients

1:1 syrup (50% water)

usage: often used as basic syrup in sorbet ice and syrup in canned fruit

100 g sugar
½ cup water

1:2 syrup (33% water)

usage: often used as syrup in canned fruit

200 g sugar
½ cup water

1:3 syrup (25% water)

usage: Italian meringue, cream puffs, marzipan

200 g sugar
100 g grape sugar or glucose
½ cup water

1:4 syrup (20% water)

usage: Italian meringue, cream puffs

300 g sugar
100 g grape sugar or glucose
½ cup water

Directions

Bring water and sugar to a boil. Let it cook until there are no visible sugar crystals left. But be aware that the longer you cook it, the more water will evaporate. So you may risk that a 1:3 syrup becomes a 1:4 instead.

Notes

1:1 (1 part sugar to 1 part water) and 1:2 syrup can usually be stored for long periods at room temperature without any problems. When you make 1:3 and 1:4 syrup then it will crystallizes if you just let it stand. You can reheat it and melt the sugar, but that is a hassle.

In order to avoid crystallization you mix two different kinds of sugar together in your syrup. Sugar molecules are a bit like Lego bricks. If they are all the same they will easily glue together and form crystals. If they are different they will not. So mixing different types of bricks / molecules prevents that they grow together and crystalize.

There must be added more than 20% “foreign” sugar for it to work. You can use both glucose, dextrose or most other sugars. Whatever you can most easily get a hold of.

It does not make much difference in the amounts if you are using a syrup or a powder as the foreign sugar.

Flavored

You can add flavor to your syrup as you like. The seeds from a vanilla pod is a good and classical flavour. Citrus zest. A stick of cinnamon. A star anise. A licorice root. They are all good, completely depending on what your syrup is to be used for.

You can also brown, up to, half the sugar first, by melting it down to get a more caramel flavor.

If you use brown sugar or cane sugar instead of part of the white sugar, the syrup will get a taste that is good for many things. Cane sugar tastes a little more like maple syrup. However, you can easily use too much brown sugar, so be careful with it.

Whether you use plain sugar or icing sugar is irrelevant. It is the same kind of sugar. But 1 cup plain sugar does not weigh the same as 1 cup icing sugar, so you should use a scale.

The syrup can be stored for months. Discard it if it becomes cloudy. It is a fungi (mold), which grows in the syrup. It can be prevented with anti fungal preservatives.

Different amounts of sugar, different viscosities © kvalifood.com