Recipe

Ingredients:

• 500g Elderberries- removed from the stalks as much as possible
• 100ml water
• 500g white sugar – (if you use more elderberries alter the water and sugar to match)
• Juice of 1 lemon or lemon juice out of the bottle if you prefer)

Method

• 1- Pick the heads of elderberries and strip the berries from their stalks (Use gloves if you don’t want purple hands like me). Wash the berries if you like, but this isn’t necessary as they are going to be strained.
• 2- Tip the berries into a saucepan and cover with water. Add the lemon juice and bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer gently for 15-20 mins until the berries have softened. Leave to cool slightly or over night if your me.
• 3- Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and measure how much liquid you have. For every 500ml of liquid, you’ll need 400g of sugar. Tip the sugar and elderberry liquid back into the cleaned saucepan Bring up to a simmer and gently bubble, the more you reduce it down the and remove the liquid the longer it lasts. I reduce it to a honey like consistency. Leave the syrup to cool completely and bottle or freeze. It can be used a an every day syrup or diluted with hot or cold water to drink. I use more often than not as a cough syrup.