Different versions of homemade elder flower juices

Last summer we travelled around the north of Europe, and we tasted a delicious elder flower juice.

As we are now in springtime and the elder tree of our garden is full of flowers, we´ve collected some to make juice. The recipe is very simple and the result is amazing. It´s a sweet, jazmin and lemon flavoured juice. And it´s also medicinal.

The Elder tree (Sacumbus Nigra) is a very usual variety found all around Europe. It flowers in the spring.

Ingredients:

• 1 liter of water
• 15 elderflowers .
• 2 lemons
• 100 grams of cane sugar (organic)
• 1 tablespoon of organic honey

Elder flowers and lemon waiting to recieve sweet hot water.

Preparation

1. Start collecting the elderflowers ( Choice the freshest ones ).
2. Place the flowers in a bowl with sliced lemon pieces, as you can see in the photo.
3. Meanwhile, heat up the water in a pot (1 litre ) and when it starts boiling turn the heat off, add the sweeteners that you like and mix well.
4. Once you have a sweetened hot water, add it into the bowl with the flowers and lemon.
5. Put a lid on the bowl and let it soak for at least 24 hours.
6. Before starting the straining process we recommend separating the lemon pieces from the bowl. I like to squeeze the juice from the little lemon pieces into the mixture, but it´s not necessary.
7. Place the mixture into the filtering glass and press with the mortair.
8. In a few seconds you´ll have a sweet elderflower juice to drink.
9. You can keep it in the fridge for 3 days and also freeze it.

Water temperature

We use hot water (80-90ºC) to better extract the essence of the flowers.

Two options: With the black lid the traditional recipe. With the green lid a more concentrate juice made with Chufamix.

Tips and advice

Extra extraction of the elderflowers´ essence: In the filtering part, after separating the lemon, you can take the flowers and cut the flowerful part of the bunch from the main branch. Throw the branches away and replace the remaining flowers into the filtering glass with the juice. Blend the mixture to better squeeze the flowers. Finally strain the juice from the flowers´ pulp with the mortar. The result is a more dense and bitter juice. Personally, I prefer this version.

More acidic juice: My friend Ainhoa, who loves acidic flavours, squeezes the lemon juice instead of using sliced lemon pieces. She mixes the remaining lemon peel with the flowers and preserves the juice to add at the end of the process to the sweetened hot water.

Enjoy drinking flowers with chufamix!