Dried Elderflower Recipes

[SarzWix]

Brill Hilary!

So by that calculation - ½oz dried = 18 heads of elderflowers.

So you'll need an ounce of dried flowers mrdinkle.

[mrdinkle]

Wow thanks Hilary and Sarah.

That means: 1 ounce = 28.3495231 grams.

So for this recipe:

20 elderflower heads
1 sliced lemon
2 tsp of citric acid (ask at your chemist)
1.5 kg (3.5 lbs) of sugar
1.2 ltr (2.5 pints) boiling water

We would need just over half an ounce? I am still confused, my poor brain can only handle so much of this maths.

I'll buy some dried flowers as it seems it is more viable than I thought cost wise. I don't want to buy all the stuff to make it only to find it ends up more expensive than buying the commercial stuff

[mrdinkle]

Just as an update to this ancient thread:

I finally got around to making this with dried elderflowers. I used 50g to be certain, I followed the HFW recipe from the first river cottage book - I ended up with 5 x 500ml bottles of cordial.

It tastes..... lovely. Well worth the effort. It came out quite dark in colour and is stronger than the commercial ones - prob use half the amount for the same flavour.

I have another 150g of dried flowers so won't be buying anymore! Next year I will make sure I pick plenty enough flowers for champagne and cordial!

[SarzWix]

Oh, I am glad it worked out
I'm sure that complicated calculation will come in handy later too

[OllieMartin]

Worth knowing.
I love the stuff, but failed to pick any heads this year, only got the berries and I have a few bagfulls in the freezer.
Might have to investigate the dried flowers option, the cordial is so expensive to buy.

[Printemps]

.....
only got the (elder)berries and I have a few bagfulls in the freezer.

That's set me thinking - I wonder if you could freeze the flowers......???

[Hilary B]

That's set me thinking - I wonder if you could freeze the flowers......???

Hope so. My freezer contains enough elderflowers for 1 batch of cordial because I ran out of bottles after the second batch, but couldn't resist picking more flowers. Hoping to make the final batch in the New Year, as now far too busy until after that.

[OllieMartin]

That's set me thinking - I wonder if you could freeze the flowers......???

I can't see why not. It'd only be a problem if you needed them to retain their structure as freezing has a habit of breaking cell walls. As you're probably just going to boil them to extract their flavour I'd think they were pretty suitable.

[Mine's a large one!]

Elderflowers can be frozen but need to be used straight out of the freezer, they turn brown and yukkie very quickly. Really you need to have everything ready and then take them out of the freezer straight into a bucket and pour on your water or even better a ready prepared sugar solution!
One packet of youngs dried elderflowers (50g) will make 2 gallons of wine