Elderberry Flowers Syrup and Elder flower Tea

Yesterday I posted these Elderberry Flower Fritters, and today I have another recipe (and a half) that you can make with elderberry flowers:

Elderberry Flowers Syrup

For this you will need 1 l of water, 1 kg of sugar, about a dozen elderberry flower heads, 30 g of citric acid and 3 organic lemons (I picked some juicy organic lemons from Regina's garden). 

Wash and cut the lemons and put them in a pot with all the other ingredients (or in a large jar, if you have it). Let this mixture stand for three days, stirring from time to time. Don't go over three days or it may ferment. After this time filter the syrup through a muslin cloth, squeezing the lemons and flowers well. Boil the filtered syrup for 5 minutes, removing any possible scam forming at the top. Cool down and filter again, through a finer cotton cloth this time. 

Bottle and use as a cordial (it is very thirst-quenching), or to flavour desserts (like panna cottaor blamanche), ice cream, fruit salads and berries.

Elder flower Tea

I am drying the remaining flowers for tea. Dry them in the shade and keep them for winter: the tea is traditionally used to relieve cold and flu, cough and sore tummy.

To learn more about foraging and eating flowers and wild plants in New Zealand come to our Slow Food event on November 24th, click here to find out where and when.

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Elderberry Flower Fritters

In this post you can see Regina and Sue collecting some elderberry flowers for our Slow Food Waitakere Pop Dining Lunch this coming Sunday. I used the flowers to make a syrup (recipe coming in the next post, watch this space!), and since I had so many I also made some fritters, and saved the leftover flowers to dry for Elder flower tea.

To learn more about foraging and eating flowers and wild plants in New Zealand come to our Slow Food event on November 24th, click here to find out when and when.

Elderberry Flower Fritters

Shake and clean (no need to wash in water) the elderberry flowers to make sure that there is no dirt (or insects).

Mix 100g of plain flour with a tsp of icing sugar and enough cold water to make a light batter (a bit like tempura). 

Pick the flowers heads by the stalk and drop into the batter, and then into hot oil. Fry, turning once, until the fritters are golden and crispy.

Dust with icing sugar and fresh elderberry flowers, then serve, hot or cold. 

I am entering this recipe for Sweet New Zealand, the monthly blogging event for Kiwi bloggers. Our November 2013 host is Mairi from Toast, click here to enter. 

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©