Elderflower cordial

We have Hawthorne hedging at bottom of the garden and my elderflower is all dried up and gone now . I always mean to gather it and do something with it as years ago we made some elderflower sparkling wine and it was beautiful , just like champagne .

It is a very good year for elderflower - we saw lots growing on the railway embankments this week (but couldn't pick any!).

If you don't have any citric acid, just make your elderflower cordial with elderflowers, water, sugar and lemon juice and freexe it. When it is slushy, beat it up to make a lovely elderfower sorbet.

I have been promising myself for some time that I will make some. The hedgerows are heady with the scent of elderflower at the moment. I have campden tablets and citric acid from making wine, so I really have no excuse, do I? MamaCaz if you have a branch of Wilko near you, they sell wine making chemicals.

What a coincidence - I've just started seeping a batch myself. It's from a recipe we were given over 25 years ago. The whole family loved it then, but for some reason, I never got round to making it again until now. Actually, I was going to do some last year, but wasn't able to buy either the citric acid or the camden tablets that I needed in any shops in Northampton or Daventry, and I had left it too late to order any online! You should have seen the blank looks I got when asking for them!