Elderflower cordial deliciousness for your weekend or garden party

If you have never made your own elderflower cordial, this is the perfect time of year to give it a go and make this deliciously fragrant and exquisite drink- perfect for your weekend or garden party.
Cordial is a syrup-y drink you can dilute with water , fizzy wine or - even better- champagne - and elderflower cordial is one of the best - plus super easy and gorgeously fabuloso to make yourself!

The elder tree thrives practically everywhere and completely boring to look at during most of the year-apart from early summer.
It then covers itself completely with big heads of delicate lacey flowers that have a lovely and tangy scent.

                                                                      Here is a detail.

  To make this lovely drink with some fizz -whether alcoholic or just fizzy water- so you can celebrate the weekend with your friends,you will need the following:

Ingredients:

20 fresh flowerheads of the eldertree ( as above- you will find elder trees in blossom right now  ).
3 sliced lemons
1.2 kg sugar
1.8 litres of boiling water
50 g citric acid.
Note : This last one ( citric acid ) is very hard to get-and is used as a preservative for your cordial - I tried quite a few chemists and had no luck .Citric acid  also exists in citrus fruits ( and in fizzy vitamin C tablets )- so in the end I opted for 4 fizzy vitamin C tablets  !! A very healthy drink !!It works the same way.
 You will also need :
Three or four sterilised glass bottles with screw-tops .( You sterilise them by putting them in the dishwasher and to let it run, or wash them and then dry them in a 150 degrees Centigrade hot oven ).


How to make the cordial :
Pick your elderflowers and put them on a big dish .

                                                       The flowers are really pretty .

Boil the water, then pour it over the sugar in a big bowl, so the sugar dissolves. Put a plate or lid on the bowl and let it cool down a bit  for 15 to 20 minutes or so.
Shake the flowerheads over the sink so that eventual small insects that are on the flowers, fall off.
Take all the stalks off the flowerheads so you have a bowl full of flowers.

Slice your lemons, then take a big pan, and put the lemon slices and the flowers in the bottom and add the cooled down sugarwater .Add the citric acid- in my case 4 tablets of fizzy vitamin C tablets which have citric acid ( this does really work ! ).

                                                                                    

Cover with a lid or plate and let it stand for 24 hours.Then, get you labels ready for your bottles.I made a label which you can print off , which is here below- it will work as a label if you print it off as a photograph in colour on plain paper ..                                      

Take a clean tea-towel and tie it over a big bowl with string. Pour the elderflower-and-lemon  liquid over / in the tea-towel so it acts as a fine sieve and the clear liquid will drip in the bowl underneath. Throw the used flowers and lemon slices away.
To pour the cordial in your bottles without spilling, I can recommend dipping a milk-jug in the big bowl of elderflower cordial and then pour the cordial in there in the bottle. Paste or glue your labels on , put your surplus cordial bottles in the fridge and crack open your first self made elderflower cordial .

           Serve with ice-cubes , fizzy water ( dilute to taste ) and a sprig of mint if you have it handy.                                                                   
                                           

                                                                                    
                                                  Enjoy your own elderflower cordial!

                                                                               
                                                                Happy weekend!
 

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