Homemade Tree Tip Syrup

Harvest spruce tips, fir tips, or pine tips to make delicious tree tip syrup at home with just two simple ingredients! The wonderful woodsy note of this homemade syrup is perfect to enjoy over breakfasts, desserts or in cocktails.

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Back when I was still living in the city with limited space and a north-facing balcony, I wasn’t able to grow food like I do today. But I still wanted to play a role in my own food production. I began learning how to make things from scratch, preserve at a very basic level, and forage for simple-to-identify wild foods.

Then one day, I picked up a copy of the Urban Homesteading Cookbook at my local library and decided to bring it along on a camping trip my husband and I were taking. I flipped through the pages as we sat around the fire.

The book was full of recipes and bits of insight from the author: a conservation biologist who was homesteading out of her high-rise condo in the heart of downtown Vancouver: proof that even people in the tiniest of urban spaces can be homesteaders too.

She kept meat rabbits in her tiny, 400-square-foot apartment, quail on her balcony, an aquaculture tank to grow plants and even grew mushrooms in her closet! I was fascinated and inspired to dive into homesteading despite the fact that I still lived in the city too. 

Amongst the pages of this book was a recipe for tree tip syrup. It seemed like such a novel idea to

a) make your own syrup, and

b) make it from the fresh growing tips of trees – I just knew that was something I had to try!

The syrup is made with two simple ingredients: brown sugar and either spruce tips, fir tips, or pine tips. These tips are the fresh growth on the tips of the branches of evergreen trees in the late spring. They’re bright green in colour, soft in texture and citrusy in flavour. They’re also edible and high in Vitamin C, and can be used to flavour all sorts of dishes either as a fresh herb or a preserve.

And lo and behold…we were camping in May, right at the exact time all the evergreen trees had new, fresh growth. I looked up and literally almost every tree was bursting with bright green tips. 

I packed a freezer bag full of them and stuck them in our cooler until we got home. This part was important because I couldn’t let them dry out since the recipe requires that the tree tips retain their natural moisture.

How to make tree tip syrup

Back in my kitchen, I pulled out my bag of tree tips and began stuffing them in a glass jar. As per the recipe in the book, I packed a layer of tree tips onto the bottom of the jar, then followed that with a thick, packed layer of brown sugar. Then I layered more tree tips and more brown sugar, and repeated this until my jar was full. And then, I waited.

Over the course of a couple weeks, the brown sugar drew out the natural moisture from the fresh tree tips and began to liquefy. When the brown sugar had completely liquefied, I strained out the tree tips, and bottled my freshly-made syrup.

I was pleasantly surprised at how citrusy it tasted, and I convinced myself that even though it was really just pure sugar water (like all syrups), at least it had the added benefit of containing lots of vitamin C, right?

In either case, it was damn delicious poured over pancakes or vanilla ice cream. It can basically be used in place of maple syrup.

Another great way I found to use my tree tip syrup was in cocktails. I made a tree tip mojito with mint, lime, fresh tree tips, and tree tip syrup. Yum.

How to forage for tree tips

Fresh growing tips tend to be ripe for the picking throughout the month of May here in the Pacific Northwest, so you can count on them anytime around late spring. You’ll know as soon as you see the bright green tips shoot out from the ends of the branches. Just remember to harvest responsibly and only take what you need to ensure healthy future growth.

You can store your tree tip syrup in the pantry at room temperature, or the refrigerator. While I’m not sure of the exact shelf life, I know that it can last a very long time. I had a bottle in my pantry for two years that was just fine. I’ve only ever had one batch go moldy, in which case I tossed it. Otherwise this has always proven to be pretty shelf stable, as well as being a crowd pleaser at family breakfasts and holiday brunches.

If you can only handle so much syrup, you can also use spruce, pine, and fir tips in a number of ways – to make tea, jelly, infused oils, vinegar, and alcohol. If you’ve never tried them, I highly recommend making this the year that you do!

I would also highly recommend a copy of The Urban Homesteading Cookbook to anyone interested in learning more about foraging (especially in the Pacific Northwest) and/or homesteading in tiny, urban areas. Looking back, that book made a huge impact on me at that time in my life and pushed me to move deeper into the homesteading, made-from-scratch lifestyle even while I was still living in my own condo in the city.

And now that I live on 1/4-acre homestead on the edge of the forest, far from the big city where I used to live, I’m still making this simple syrup every spring. The only difference is, now the evergreen trees are literally in my backyard:)

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Homemade Tree Tip Syrup

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Ingredients

• 1 to 2 cups of fresh spruce, fir or pine tips (the bright green fresh growing tips in season in late spring)
• Brown sugar

Instructions

1. Harvest the fresh growing tips by pulling them gently off the end of the branches by their base. Discard any papery covering still left on them. Harvest responsibly!
2. Rinse the tree tips off and let any excess water dry off.
3. Pack a layer of tree tips tightly at the bottom of a glass jar. Then pack a tight layer of brown sugar over top of the layer of tree tips.
4. Continue alternating layers of tree tips with brown sugar until the jar is tightly packed all the way to the top.
5. Once the jar is packed, screw the lid and band on (you can reuse old lids), and leave in a cool place to sit for a couple weeks.
6. Turn and lightly shake the mixture every few days in order to mix it up and allow any sugar sitting at the bottom of the jar to blend in and liquefy. Continue to add brown sugar (and tree tips if you have more) to the mixture as the sugar liquefies and condenses, leaving room in the jar.
7. After the sugar has completely liquefied, strain out the tree tips and bottle your syrup in a bottle or another glass jar and store in a cool, dark place.

Wishing you homemade, homegrown, homestead happiness 🙂

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