playing with my food

there's nothing more fun than dribbling honey onto yogurt - especially at breakfast time when you are tired and not in much of a rush.
This isn't proper honey though, this is "tannenschösslihonig" and, as it's about the right time of year to make it, I'll give you the recipe:

ingredients:

400 g fresh, young shoots of a fir tree (the bright green bits off the ends - depending on where you live, they are either ready now or sometime between now and May)
1 liter of water
3 slices of lemon
1 kg of sugar
  

Preparation:
Bring the fir shoots to the boil with the water and lemon slices.
Cover and steep thirty minutes, then sieve through a muslin. Add the sugar and cook for about 1.5 hours until the mix turns into "honey"
Test the consistency on a plate and if it is thick enough fill into clean jars and seal.
Store in a cool dry place out of direct sunlight. Keeps for about a year but you'll probably eat it before then.

In the olden days, they used to boil up the pine shoots without sugar and use less water - it is possible to make "honey" this way too and it was something that was often done during the second world war when sugar was rationed. If anyone has a recipe for that, please post it because I would be interested in a non-sugar version of this.