syrup | little home by hand

It’s that time of the year again where there are elderberry bushes in bloom at every corner. These bushes (or sometimes trees) grow wild pretty much everywhere around here and it always amazes me that hardly anyone knows what they are or “uses” them.

I made elderberry syrup two years ago but found that we didn’t use the rich syrup very often. So this year I wanted to try the lighter version – syrup from the flowers to add to cold drinks.
Making elderflower syrup is very easy, as attested by the fact that I made it between working late and hurrying off to yoga class on a monday evening.

You’ll need a couple (maybe 20-30 at max) elderflower heads, lemons (I used three), sugar and plain water.
I think everyone makes their syrup differently, but here’s how I did it: I stripped the flowers off the plant as well as I could, placed them in a pot and covered them with water. It’s important not to wash the flowers before or you’ll lose the pollen that makes the syrup so yummy.

I left the flowers to soak in the water overnight (this also gives the creepy crawlies time to escape) and then strained the now bright-yellow water through a coarse sieve first and through cheesecloth afterwards. Somewhere in between I added the juice from the three lemons

Now you could use that water to make the syrup right away but I didn’t want to boil it long in case it lost flavour. So instead I boiled down 1 litre of plain water with about 1.5-2kg sugar until it thickened into a nice sticky syrup, then added the elderflower water and brought the mixture back to the boil for a short time.
Now all that’s left is fill the hot syrup into canning jars and bottles (I usually give them a spin in the dishwasher first or, as in this case, sterilize them in boiling water). And you’re done!

The syrup is very sweet and the flavour is heavenly. Add to ice water on a hot day and enjoy.

The blackberries are ripe throughout the woods and on Sunday we went picking.

It’s scratchy business, the bushes are thorny and stinging nettles grow everywhere.

But so rewarding (sorry for the crappy picture, my camera functions were off and I didn’t notice til afterwards).

I’m planning to make blackberry syrup this year because we’ve still got jam from last year’s blackberries (we only got around to making it in spring). But we need to go picking at least once more.

The elderberries too are ripe but I’m not going to pick any since I still have a bottle of syrup from last year and it’s too rich to eat pure anyway, so it will last a long time still.

The berries are all ripe much earlier than in the years before and there are lots and lots. The cool, wet summer seems to have been good for them.

I’m typing this up all in a hurry before work. I usually have two evenings a week to myself to blog and go through my reader, but since we started apartment hunting these evenings are now filled with looking at apartments. This evening we’ll be looking at another one.
I’ve more tops and stuff to post and blogs to read, I’ve yarn I’m dying to start on and another dress cut out and waiting to be sewn up. I’m putting all my hopes on saturday 🙂