Clémentine (blog: Amande & Basilic) shares with us recipes to cook the best healthy meal. Perfect for spring time, let's start with the drink: the Elderflower Lemonade.
A Wild Recipe
During Spring, let’s enjoy elderflower bloom. What can we make with these cute little flowers?
You can carefully look at how beautiful they are, take picture with a macro lens to capture the delicacy of these little white flowers. Or you can turn them into a natural and light lemonade.
It took long time for me to finally prepare elderflower lemonade because it’s pretty rare where I live. I had to walk along many roads to finally find some. Be careful, there are two types of Elder trees: the black one (Sambucus Nigra L.) is the one we will be using. However, the other type: Sambucus Ebulus L (or Dwarf Elderberry) is toxic.
But don’t worry about that, both types are drastically different. Moreover, the black elder blooms during Spring while the dwarf elder blooms at the end of Summer.
Fairies Champagne
What a cute name, isn’t it? It’s like entering a fairy world.
In fact, the Elderflower has been used for medicinal purposes for centuries now. It seems that the Elderflower drink exists since the Neolithic age. Since Pliny The Elder until today, the use of elderflower has endured over time.
You can use these flowers to make the lemonade I am about to give you the recipe; but you can also make doughnuts or herbal teas. Drank as herbal tea, the flowers fight rhinopharyngitis, flu and cold. They have relaxing properties and relieve arthritis. In shape of cream, the elderflower is efficient to relieve skin cracks and frostbites.
As you can notice, the Elderflower is highly useful.
I hope it will motivates you to go pick up wild flowers in the nature. Enjoy the recipe!
RECIPE
Preparation: 5 minutes
Cooking: 5 minutes
Rest: 3 weeks
For 2 liters
Ingredients
5 - corymbs of elderflower
1 - lemon
2 - liters of source water
200g - brown sugar
1 teaspoon - apple vinegar (12ml)
Material
A large opening fermentation jar
Instructions
1. Make a syrup with sugar and water: add water and sugar in a saucepan and boil it. When the sugar is dissolved, let it cool down.
2. Meanwhile, clean the elderflowers and remove green parts. Keep the flowers only.
3. In a large jar, add the flowers, slices of lemon, a teaspoon of apple vinegar and the syrup.
4. Mix well then close the jar (non-hermetic/leaky so it can freely ferment).
5. Leave the jar 5 days in the sunlight and mix it everyday. It is the required time to start the fermentation. When the liquid turns into a lemonade, you will see small bubbles that will rise to the top.
6. After 5 days, you can filter the lemonade and transfer it to plastic bottles.
7. Leave it ferment for around 3 weeks at room temperature, then put to the fridge (you can also storage the bottles in a cellar). Now the lemonade is ready to be drank throughout Summer time!
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