DIY Cough - Throat Drops

I have been meaning to do this for months.  Last fall we bought some herbal cough drops and they were very nice. (Swiss Alps yodeling man) I also have a friend that buys the essential oils cough drops they were wonderful but very pricey ($.60 per drop). Or at least  I thought that was a lot to pay for a cough drop.  So ever since then I thought certainly I could make these myself.   So today was the day.

The first thing I did was to steep some STRONG herbal tea.  I used chamomile, rose hips, peppermint, and orange rind.

After steeping I stained through a coffee filter because I wanted it completely clear.

Cough drop recipe:

1 cup of herbal tea

2 cups sugar

3/4 cup honey

1 tablespoon butter

Bring to a boil to a hard crack, 300 degrees

When your syrup is at 300 degrees remove it from the heat and let it cool just a bit. 

Then add  1.5 tablespoons lemon juice.

Be very careful - it splatters!

At this point these are very good herbal drops.  You can stop right here if you want to.

(Swiss Alps yodeling man type)

But I wanted to duplicate the pricey essential oil drops so I added some LorAnn's oil.

I used Anise, Spearmint, and Cloves.

I have to say these are wonderful!

I really do think they are every bit as good as the $$ drops.  

Since I haven't yet purchased molds I needed to make my own.  

Below is powdered sugar in a cookie sheet pressed firmly with a second pan.

I used the end of a whisk to make indentations in the sugar.  It was a good size for the drops.

When the drops were hard I sifted them out of my powdered sugar so it wasn't a waste of all this sugar.

These are the finished drops.

I think these are worth investing in some good silicone molds.  I think that would be a lot less work and clean up.  But I really wanted to try this before spending the money for the molds.

Store in an airtight container.

a little bird