Elderflower Fritters

For tea last night I decided to have a decadent foraged pudding - elderflowers fritters. 

Now I know the main calories are from store bought ingredients but it's the elderflower that really makes them taste amazing!

Ingredients -
Elderflower heads - fresh picked.
oil for frying
100g of self raising flour,
2 tablespoons cornflour,
2 tablespoons caster sugar,
1 egg
175ml of sparkling water.

Mix all the ingredients for the batter together, heat the oil, dip the heads in the batter and fry!

Make sure you dust them with icing sugar when cooked and try not to eat any stems (they don't make good eating).

We all loved these and ate far too many! Might have to try it with meadowsweet later in the summer!

Elderflower Champagne

It's that time of year again when my hay fever is going crazy - It can only mean one thing - Time to make elderflower champagne!

Now it's not the elder flower that sets off my hay fever, but I always put the two things together in my head now!

Two Batches Of Elderflower Cordial

About two weeks ago I made my first ever batch of elderflower cordial. Once we tried it I set about making another batch a few days later - it tastes so good!

No Elder flowers on our plot this year so we had to go to a friends house and pinch some of theirs!

I picked a bag full of elderflower heads, grated three lemons and then left the whole lot to infuse over night by pouring 2 litres of boiling water over it.

The next day I added the juice of the lemons and added a table spoon of citric acid and a kilo of sugar, I then heated this up in the saucepan until it boiled before adding it to some Kilner bottles that had been sterilised (and warmed) in the oven.

I also made some ice lollies out of the mixture which should be nice and refreshing on a summers day.

 I've read that this will only keep a couple of months but I doubt there's much chance of it lasting that long. I'd like to try and pasteurise some cordials in the future so we could keep them a lot longer without freezing them and maybe reduce the number of the ones that we buy. I thought this might last longer than that due to the sugar content. If I see a Berco boiler at a car boot sale it might be worth me trying it, I think you need to heat it at 70 degrees for a few minutes to kill all the bugs. 

Blackcurrent cordial next I think! Anyone else been making cordials?