You’ll Never Buy Cough Drops Again After Learning This!
All you need is some sugar, water, honey, ground cloves, ginger and lemon juice. You will also need a pot as well as a baking sheet with some parchment and a teaspoon.
Preparing the Ingredients
Instead of working with exact measurement, let’s work with proportions instead so that you can scale up or down as needed. Fill a coffee mug to the rim with sugar and pour into the pot. Fill the mug between ½ and two thirds the way up with water and also pour into the pot. Squeeze the juice from half of a lemon and add a heaping tablespoon of honey. Add about ¾ teaspoon of ground cloves and a teaspoon of ground ginger.
Bring the mixture up to a low boil on low to medium heat and stir until the ingredients dissolve and are thoroughly blended. Gently boil the ingredients for 20 minutes while you occasionally stir to prevent the mixture from sticking to the pan. Let the mixture cool until it reaches the consistency of thick honey. Take a dollop with your teaspoon and let it drip onto a piece of parchment. The mixture will be ready to pour once it is thick enough to retain its shape and viscous enough to drip onto the parchment.
Make dollops on the parchment with between ¼ and ½ teaspoon of syrup. These will produce bite-sized lozenges. Line them in neat rows about an inch apart on the parchment and allow to cool and harden at room temperature.
Sprinkle them with powdered sugar or some corn starch in order to keep them from sticking together. Coat them evenly to ensure that the surfaces are covered. You should be able to slide them off of the parchment into a mixing bowl without too much difficulty. However, you may need to scrape them gently with a spatula or pancake turner to get them loose. Once the lozenges are in the bowl, give it a gentle shake so they are covered completely with the sugar or corn starch.
Store them in a cool and dry place in order to prevent the lozenges from becoming soft and stick together. You can also wrap them individually if you have some extra time along with appropriate paper on hand.
Sugar plays an important role in this recipe because it helps to caramelize the ingredients and give them a harder texture. This is in contrast to other homemade lozenge recipes that remain soft and chewy. Harder lozenges last longer before dissolving in the mouth, and this extra time can lead to a better soothing effect.
Finally, if the mixture is too thick, consider adding a little bit more water. If the mixture is too runny, add some more honey. Keep playing with proportions until you get it just right.
Feel free to add other ingredients from remedies that are known to work for you and your family. Mint is a popular option, and some people put some cayenne pepper in as well. Try this recipe out for yourself and see how easy it is to make your own supply of healthy and natural lozenges. Just make sure that you are using real bee honey because clove and synthetic variants do not contain the same compounds that soothe the airways and promote healing.
