Elderflower Cordial

The elder trees were late flowering this year but they produced a mighty fine crop of flowers when they did eventually bloom. Elderflower cordial is one of my most favourite drinks so I always like to make some each summer. The flowers were so good and so plentiful that I made four batches of the cordial. I used the same method as last year, bottling some in sterilised glass bottles and freezing most of it in plastic bottles.

We've finished a bottle of the cordial already. It was delicious.

Here are the pink flowers soaking. Our black elder has grown a lot since last year so there were more flowers to use.

Doesn't it look gorgeous? I'm always amazed at the beautiful colour; it's so deep even though the flowers are quite a delicate pink.

As usual, I plan to keep the pink cordial for Christmas. However, since there's more than usual, I just might treat myself before that.

Your comments on the crocheted bag in my last post were very kind and encouraging. Thank you very much. I always enjoy reading your comments and really appreciate them.

Bye for now and all the best.

Blackcurrant Cordial

Hello and welcome back again. Christmas has been and gone and we're more or less back to normal. The husband has taken the Christmas trees to use in the garden; the pine needles are especially good for spreading over beds with fruit bushes.

Talking of fruit bushes, we had a big blackcurrant harvest last summer. Rather than use the fruit there and then, I washed it, bagged it and put it in the freezer. This makes it very handy for making jam or cordial later on. I recently made some blackcurrant cordial so I thought I'd let you see the process. I got the recipe on the internet years ago and can't remember where. But it's just a basic recipe that you could find anywhere.

So, this is what you need:

450g blackcurrants
250g caster sugar
260ml water
whole lemon

De-stalk and wash the blackcurrants. You don't need to be too fussy with the de-stalking as none of the fruit ends up in the cordial. Just make sure there aren't anything creatures still there!

Place the blackcurrants, sugar and water into a saucepan. Melt the sugar over low heat, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.


 
Once the sugar has dissolved, bring the syrup to a gentle simmer. Simmer the fruits for 5 minutes.

 
Now add the juice and skin of the lemon. You can see I'm using two lemons because I made double the quantity.

Bring the syrup back to simmer for a further 5 minutes.


 

 
Let the cordial cool for 10 minutes. Meanwhile sterilise a glass bottle.

Pass the cordial through a fine sieve (or muslin).

 
This is what was left behind after the juice had dripped through. The wild birds eat it once it has gone cold.

 
Pour the cordial into the sterilised bottle, cool and keep refrigerated until needed. I like to strain it through my funnel to make sure there are no wee bits still left in the cordial.

 
There it is! You only need a small amount of cordial diluted with plenty of water.

 

This same method can be used for other fruits such as grapes. There are some grapes in my freezer that I must use to make cordial. The grape cordial is very mild and I really like it. Sometimes I mix blackcurrants and grapes too.

 

Back in the summer I made some pink elderflower cordial which I froze in plastic bottles. We had it at Christmas, diluted with sparkling water. Very tasty!

 

There are some crochet projects that have been finished and progress with knitting that I hope to show you very soon. Just need to get the camera into action again.

 

All the very best for now. Thanks for all your lovely comments; I'm looking forward to getting lots more this year.

 



Pink Elderflower Cordial

We have a black elder growing in our garden (Sambucus Nigra) planted, I suppose, four years ago. Last year was the first that I picked the flowers and made elderflower cordial with them; as well as making cordial with the usual white elderflowers. There isn't really anything black about our black elder. The leaves are deep purple and the flowers are a gorgeous pink.

 

As the tree is still very young we only get enough flowers to make one batch of cordial. I was really hoping, last year, that the cordial would be pink (even just a tiny bit) and I was so pleased that it was very definitely, unmistakenly, pink.

This weekend I made cordial with another batch of white elderflowers (picked along a very little used back road nearby) and also with our own pink elderflowers.

Making elderflower cordial is actually very easy.

I used separate food grade buckets for the two types of flowers.

In each bucket I dissolved 1kg of granulated sugar in 1.7l of boiling water. Adding citric acid improves the keeping qualities of the cordial so I always like to add a 50g packet to each batch.

Then I added the flowers to each bucket. Roughly 15 to 20 flower heads is enough though I sometimes use more than that. Stir the flowers into the sugar mixture so they are completely submerged.

The pink flowers immediately started to turn the syrup solution pink. The photo shows it just starting to develop the colour but by the time I was ready to bottle the cordial it was much deeper.

 

 

I roughly peeled four large lemons and two limes, then sliced them and divided between the two buckets. My lemons were very big so I only used two plus a lime for each bucket. Otherwise I would have used either three lemons and a lime or four lemons per bucket. Then I covered the buckets and left for about 36 hours (you need to leave for at least 24 hours but no more than 48).

Bottling the cordial doesn't take long at all. First of all the cordial needs to be strained. I used double muslin over a jug to do this, carefully pouring the liquid from the bucket into the muslin strainer and leaving most of the flower heads and fruit in the bucket. It ran through the muslin very quickly and was then ready to bottle.

Using a funnel, I poured the cordial into some clean plastic bottles (leaving a gap for expansion) ready to put in the freezer as a special treat for Christmas.

 
I bottled the remaining pink cordial and all of the white (clear) cordial in glass bottles. Glass bottles need to be sterilised first. I did this by putting them in the Aga's simmering oven for 10 minutes. You can do the same in any oven using a temperature of about 180ºC (375ºF).

I'm so pleased that we'll be able to have the pink elderflower cordial again this Christmas. It was very much appreciated last year - especially by me! I wish I could give you all a sample but you'll just have to believe me that it is very delicious indeed.