Did you read you are cordially invited? You’ll see from there how fantastically summery elderflower cordial makes me feel…

The trouble I have each year with anything that involves collecting nature’s bountiful harvest, is that I find it hard to stop. And the cordial this year is unbelievably good. Please please make it, you’ll never look back and never want to drink even the best shop stuff again.

Cue a second mega batch of cordial and then a trawl of Google to see what else I could find for inspiration to preserve the deliciousness of these beautiful floral gems.

What’s that you said? Elderflower liqueur? Oooohhhhh. Mwahahahaha! Well I don’t mind if I do thank you very much for asking.

So I have made limoncello before, that had it’s good and bad points. A few years ago, after a trip to Italy where we drank the stuff on a daily basis, I decided that it would be a truly romantic notion to make my own. It was surely not too difficult? Merely a matter of soaking lemon rind in sugar and vodka for a month or so…

After a month of waiting very patiently, excitedly checking and staring at it every day, I prepared a lovely Italian meal, lasagne, tricolore salad, the full works. Then we tried the limoncello. It was like a cross between rocket fuel and fairy liquid. Disgusting. Epic fail of the highest order. And it looked for all the world like the plastic bottles that you see at the side of the road when you know a lorry driver has been caught short.

But then several months later, we had a New Year’s Eve party and the boys drunk our drinks cabinet dry. I found the hideous limoncello and gave them that thinking they would be too drunk to care. Turns out that after four months it had mellowed and was absolutely bloody delicious. And they’d drunk the lot before I realised. Lesson learned.

Anyhoo, methinks I shall try and make my very own middle class moonshine so here goes:

Grab a 2l Kilner jar, add 350g sugar

Peel two lemons with your potato peeler, add the rind to the jar

Wash your elderflowers really carefully by swirling them in clean water and snip the flowers from the stalks of around 15 heads and add to the jar

Top up with 1 litre of vodka!

Agitate (I don’t mean tell it you think yellow’s not it’s colour) and push the flowers under the vodka with a metal spoon

Leave in a darkened room for a month, strain and bottle. I sterilise bottles with boiling water and strain through cheesecloth btw.

And I’m going to advise leaving it a couple of months to mature, if my limoncello was anything to go by.

I did a cheeky thing as I couldn’t resist and thought I’d have a go inventing an elderflower gin too. Hey if you can do it with sloes…

Oooooohhhhh I can’t wait!