Elderflower cordial

The gooseberries on my bush are getting bigger, so soon I will be cooking them. There are a lot of recipes out there that want elderflower cordial to with the gooseberries, so I thought I might have a go at making some.

So, first pluck your elderflowers. This required an expedition around the corner to a bit of public bush - there are elders growing all along the road from town to my house, but most of them are on someone's property.

I went down to the Broad Bay slip site, which is a bit of hill which was slowly slipping into the harbour until the conservationists planted it with lots of native plants. It's a sort of native bush reserve, but there are plenty of exotics around the perimeter.

There were two different trees with little white flowers, so I picked some of each to bring home and identify. I was pretty sure that one of them was hawthorn, but this one should be elder:

I'm only making a little bit - I don't know if I like it yet.

Here's my car down at what passes for a car park:

And here's the track I followed:

A family of Paradise ducks taking their lives in their hands wings:

Anyway, I pulled all the little flowers off their whatever it's called …

… and put them to soak with a couple of slices of orange and lemon  in some sugar syrup:

If it turns out to be delicious, I'll go for another expedition to pick more.