Lavender Lemonade Recipe Inspired by Taylor Swift

This Lavender Lemonade cocktail with edible flowers is a thing of beauty — especially if you love Taylor Swift.

Just like we pick food that goes with the season and our mood, we choose music based on how we're feeling (or what we want to feel). So like the perfect dinner party playlist, it only makes sense to pair what we're eating or drinking with the music playing.

Enter the Lavender Lemonade, a gin and edible flower cocktail recipe inspired by Taylor Swift's song "august." 

This drink is from mastermind Ashley Gibson's new book SIP ME, BABY, ONE MORE TIME: Cocktails Inspired by Pop Music's Iconic Women. There's nothing accidental about the liquor she's putting in our cocktails (IYKYK), and this Swiftian recipe below is one of our favorites among a sea of original options held within.

But the book isn't just for Swift stans — it's for anyone who's ever yelled along to Beyoncé's question "who run the world" or blared Mariah Carey in their bedroom.

I know so many people who need this book.

I can picture Britney Spears acolyte and pop music-obsessed Peloton star Cody Rigsby spinning his wheels to it — especially with Britney inspiring the book's title and her song "Everytime" as the underpinning of the second recipe inside. 

There's something for almost everyone, with drinks dedicated to women from Selena Gomez to Kacey Musgraves and tracks spanning from SZA's current radio chart topper to Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" that came out the year I was born.

But more than anyone, there's something here for the Swifties.

That makes sense, because Gibson is a self-described "professional Swiftie." (Her bio says she works a corporate day job, and while the billionaire has been called "The Music Industry," something tells me Tay Tay is not the author's employer.)

(photo by David Gray/AFP via Getty Images)

About the Book

Sip Me Baby grew out of the pandemic, when Gibson "started making my own cocktails at home and FaceTiming [my friends] instead, while we blasted our favorite pop songs and danced together from a distance," as she wrote in the intro.

Later they realized they had more fun together at home than out anyway, and Gibson built a community online of other people looking to make their own gorgeous and affordable cocktails at home, too. Sip Me Baby grew out of that. 

The book is split into seven themed sections: Heartbreak, Fury, Healing, Celebration, Comfort, Longing, and Love. Each comes with about 15 cocktail recipes, and each is paired with a song, thereby building a playlist for each of the feelings. 

Taylor Swift shows up in every section, usually multiple times. Besides leading off the entire collection, she's particularly dominant in the Longing section, with three tracks including the one tied to the recipe below.

Another, the Hazy Lavender Gin Sour (that fans clearly know the song behind), relies on gin and the same lavender syrup in this Lavender Lemonade a couple pages earlier. So why not try both recipes?

(The third Swift track in the section, "Delicate," inspired a Blue Coconut Rum. Other songs include MUNA and Phoebe Bridgers' "Silk Chiffon" and Madonna's "Like a Prayer.")

The book also starts by walking through some materials, ingredients, and how to make syrups that appear throughout in order to set you up for success!

Why So Much Taylor Swift?

Besides the fact that Gibson is a huge Swift fan, there's a good reason that the pop icon is ubiquitous throughout the book.

"Taylor interweaves color in her music to convey emotions and I always go off of that when creating drinks based on her songs," Gibson told Food Fanatic. "The most obvious one being Maroon. But she also uses blue and gold a lot to describe love and heartbreak. Other artists do this too, but since I listen to Taylor so much, I've become familiar with all of her use of color. Also, each of her eras are represented by their own color, so even if a song doesn't reference any colors, I can go by the color of the era."

Cue, "Losing him was blue like I've never known, missing him was dark gray, all alone..." in all of our heads!

(above - Ashley Gibson)

About the Recipe

You could argue that a drink inspired by "august" should include wine — namely because of the "August sipped away like a bottle of wine" lyric. And I can definitely picture Taylor partaking in some dandelion wine, lost in a summer memory.

Or better yet, how about some Sad Girl Sangria, the very first recipe in Gibson's book, inspired by Swift's opus "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" instead? It calls for a bottle of pinot noir, apple cider, cinnamon sticks, and other very appropriately fall ingredients. (Get the book for the full recipe.)

Still, as countless news reports attest, Swift's cocktail of the moment is a French Blonde. It's a gin drink like this one and similarly possesses a floral influence (in the Lillet Blanc) and a lemon component, so as far as I'm concerned, Gibson's right on the money with the Lavender Lemonade. 

"This drink tastes like summer love," she writes in the book. "The lemon is cooling and refreshing, with a touch of romantic lavender, a flower I think Augustine would appreciate."

Tips for Making This Drink

This cocktail doesn't take too much time to assemble, but it does require planning ahead. You'll need to freeze the ice cubes with dried edible flowers in advance — at least overnight — and the lavender syrup needs to be made in advance, too.

The recipe calls for 1/2 an ounce of the lavender syrup. You will likely have more, which is a good thing, especially if you're making a drink for a loved one, too!

If you search for butterfly pea tea online, you'll probably find people complaining about how it tastes. Don't panic! For starters, this recipe only calls for a small percentage of the tea. But more importantly, as Gibson notes, you should only brew it for 1 minute to avoid that overpowering flavor. 

I've definitely had that issue with other teas before — I'm the problem, it's me. Not the tea. Steep less!

Gibson does not have a preferred source for dried edible flowers or butterfly pea tea, she said — she usually orders both on Amazon whenever the mood strikes because she's "a very 'last-minute' type of person," she said.

Another tip — while it was inspired by the song "august," we think this drink would also pair perfectly with Taylor Swift's newest album!

(photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

What Type of Gin to Use

The recipe in the Sip Me Baby doesn't call for a specific gin, but Gibson told us that her favorite gins are Farmer's Gin and Malfy Gin Rosa.

"Farmer's is a botanical gin and Malfy Gin Rosa is a very light pink, citrus-infused Italian gin that pairs perfectly with grapefruit, elderflower, and lemon," she said.

Alternately, Empress gin offers a purple color, she said. Conniption Kinship gin is also a beautiful purple hue and super popular with bartenders and gin fans — in large part due to its color.

Now you have everything you need to get started! 

So, in the words of Gibson (in the book's introduction): "Get out the edible glitter, put on your cutest dress OR your comfiest pajamas, fire up your portable speaker, and call up your best friends. It's time to make some amazing drinks."

This recipe is only for people who are of legal drinking age.

Recipe and some quotes excerpted from SIP ME, BABY, ONE MORE TIME: Cocktails Inspired by Pop Music's Iconic Women by Ashley Gibson. Copyright © 2024. Available from Running Press, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. All drink and book photos by Alyson Brown.