The elderflower season is a great opportunity to go picking some flowers and try out different recipes with these delicate flowers: syrup, jelly, infusion for example.
Here I propose an elderflower and lemon jelly, with fresh and tangy notes. This jelly will be perfect with yoghurts, cottage cheese, waffles, cheesecake… or just with a slice of good bread!
Elderflower and lemon jelly
Ingredients
- 75 g elderflower heads (i.e. 40 g of flowers after removing the stems)
- 1 l water
- ½ lemon
- 400 g sugar
- 2,5 g agar agar
Instructions
- Pick the elder flowers with scissors, making sure they are open and white. Avoid flowers that are infested with insects.
- Place the flowers on a clean sheet or cloth and wait 30 minutes for the insects to leave. Or gently shake the elderberry umbels to remove the insects, then check that none remain, otherwise remove them by hand.
- Cut off as much of the green stems as possible (you can also pick the flowers with your fingertips or a fork or knife, but it takes longer) so that only the flowers remain.
- Wash the lemon, and cut half the lemon into slices.
- In a large container, pour the flowers, place the lemon slices and cover with water.
- Leave to macerate for at least 12 hours.
- Then remove the lemon and pour the water and flowers into a saucepan. Bring everything to the boil. Once boiling, turn off the heat.
- Place a cheesecloth or a very fine strainer over another pan or a large bowl and pour in the elderflower juice. Squeeze the elderflowers with the back of a spoon to extract the liquid.
- If necessary, repeat this step if you do not obtain a very clean juice after the first filtration.
- Mix the agar agar and sugar. Add them to the filtered elderflower juice. Mix well with a wooden spatula.
- Heat the mixture over medium heat. Bring to the boil and cook for about 7 minutes while stirring.
- In the meantime, sterilise the jam jars (put them 5 to 10 minutes into boiling water).
- Pour the hot, liquid jelly into the sterilised jars and leave to cool before eating!
Notes
To accentuate the lemony/sour flavour of this recipe, you can add a little lemon zest or candied yuzu pieces.
You could also try this recipe with acacia flowers instead of elderflowers or lime blossoms.