Elderflower and lemon jelly

 

After the move down from Leeds, I thought that we wouldn't be posting much for a while, which is probably true, but here is a simple sweet that epitomises summer. I've been fancying jelly or Jello for a little while now and decided to do a bit more of an unconventional jelly which encompasses some very traditional English summer flavours. Elderflower is a highly scented plant which can be used to make cordial, champagne, jams and so on.  In my box of goodies I brought back from Leeds, we had some gelatin leaves to use. The weather has been very variable lately, ranging from lovely and sunny to torrential rain, thunder storms and 2 inch hail stones...  I managed to collect some elderflower from a local park between these periods of extreme weather to use in this recipe. This is a very simple recipe, and is full aromatic sweetness.

Elderflower and Lemon Jelly

Makes 4 wine glasses

Ingredients

15-20 heads of elderflower

1.5 pints of water

250 g sugar

7 leaves of gelatin

3 tbsp of lemon juice

zest of 1 lemon 

zest of 1/2 a lemon for finishing

Method

1. Pour the sugar, lemon juice and zest of 1 lemon in a sauce pan and cover with the water. Remove most of the stalks from the heads and place the flowers into the pan also (only use heads which have pollen on them and are fully in flower - don't worry about any tiny bugs as that will be dealt with later)

2. Bring the mix to the boil and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Take the pan off the heat and cover, leave to infuse and cool to just above lukewarm (about an hour or two). Prepare your gelatin by pre-soaking in water for at least 5 minutes. (A useful website with extra information about gelatin - we use the small leaves)

3. Strain the mixture through a sieve lined with muslin, this will remove the tiny little bugs the flower heads and lemon zest - discard these. Remove the gelatin from soaking and squeeze the excess water out, place in the warm mixture and stir until dissolved. Stir through the lemon zest for finishing and pour into 4 wine glasses. Place in the fridge and leave to set for about 4-5 hours.