A cordial attempt.

It seemed that for our entire Cornwall holiday last week, we were never more than about 20 paces from a display of elderflower - in the fields, hedgerows, gardens...  You name it, elderflower was there.  I determined to do something about it - make some elderflower cordial.  Not while on holiday (picking elderflower from the roadside can appartently result in fume-tainted cordial, quite apart from anything else!)

So when we returned, I decided to find some elderflower, harvest it and make it into cordial.  A bottle of elderflower cordial costs £3.15 at Tesco...

Finding the elderflower was harder than I thought - yes, it grows along every road in the land, but I wanted non-exhausted elderflower (so to speak).  Little Boy and I went on a long and largely fruitless (flowerless?!) search,but had a fun outing whilst on our hunt.

 We eventually found some by our cricket pitches.  With my completely inexpert eye, it looked about right.

 We took it home, dissolved a kilo of sugar in a bowl of about 1.5 litres of boiling water, cooled it down in a sink of cold water and rinsed the flowers in the sink, adding them to the cooled, sugary water (I trimmed them to minimise stalks).  We also added the zest of two lemons and sliced the lemons into the water.  (I did a second batch which was one lemon and one orange...)

 This was then clingwrapped and put in the fridge overnight.  We then strained it, first through some muslin. 

 Then, because I wasn't convinced the muslin was fine enough, through a tea towel. 

 This can then be diluted (either with fizzy water or with normal) and made into a lovely drink. 

 Hey presto, elderflower cordial.
We'll probably add some preservative if we want to keep it, or bottle it into the freezer... 
It's actually probably a bit too sweet, so I might ease up on the sugar next time :)