I love creating things to eat and drink. One of our very favourites is elderflower champagne. Around about my son's birthday in June, the elderflowers are out and it's time to start making the fizz. It's very easy to make - just soak elderflower heads, lemons, sugar and water together, bottle it and 2 weeks later you have the most delicious and fragrant sparkling drink.
It always amazes us that the fizz is generated by the natural yeasts in the flowers. It does get very poppy indeed. You have to bottle it in champagne bottles (good excuse to drink fizzy alcohol the rest of the year in order to generate the empty bottles), pop a cork in and secure with a wire. The first year we made it quite a few bottles exploded due to insecure wiring!
Even this year without a proper a kitchen we still made about 10 bottles. We couldn't resist. Last weekend we tested a bottle and it's a good vintage. Nothing better on an autumnal Sunday lunchtime than to pop open a bottle of elderflower and drink up some early summer fragrance.
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