If the month of June had a taste-in-a-glass

This Danish tradition would, in my mind, be elderberry! June is a month of lots of great tastes from the garden: the first of the peas, herbs, strawberries. We enjoy this lovely cool drink of elderberry concentrate, sometimes mixed with still water, sometimes bubbly water and always over ice. I make the concentrate and freeze it as I harvest which gives me lots of ice cubes in bags to enjoy throughout the winter when I am craving a little reminder of sunshine.

fresh picked elderberry from my garden

I have a very productive bush that grows in a sunny corner of my front garden. I pick them at the beginning or end of the day.

I use my dear friend’s recipe from her blog:

Anne Sture Tucker – Balanced Living.

Elderberry Flower Juice

40 Clusters of flowers

3 organic lemons

1 1/2 kg Raw sugar – (the original recipe asks for caster sugar to get a clear blonde juice, but I prefer to use the healthier raw sugar)

2 liters of boiling water

Rinse the elderberry flowers, put them into a big bowl. Wash the organic lemons, slice them and put them with the flowers.

Add the sugar – pour over the boiling water and stir till the sugar has dissolved.

Leave it to cool – cover it and put it in the fridge for 3 days to “brew”. Take it out and stir every day.

On the third day strain the juice through a cloth pour it in to distilled bottles. There is no preservative in the juice and therefore it will not last long.”

I freeze it into ice cubes – then on a hot summer day- I just pop one or two cubes into a jug + water = the taste of summer ☀️🍋🍋

I pick the flower heads when they are partially open or all open. I leave the tightly held blooms for the next batch.

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