I love the flavour of Elderflower. It’s delicate, floral and goes beautifully with lemon, white chocolate or – to head in a completely different direction – vodka.
When I have people over, I like to make a signature cocktail, and in summer I usually add elderflower cordial either as one of the main ingredients or as a background note that adds to the deliciousness without people necessarily being able to pick it out. Recently, I made a lemon and passionfruit mix (Charlie’s Old-fashioned Lemonade + freshly squeezed lemon juice + passionfruit pulp), then added elderflower cordial and vodka to taste. People are still raving about it and it literally took moments to make!
You can now buy elderflower cordial from the supermarket, and it’s not bad. The Bottlegreen is good and contains a good amount of elderflower (20%) and is made in the UK. Australia isn’t known for the production of elderflower, but I wanted to see if I could find it locally made.
Ashbolt Farm in Tasmania produces elderflower products, as well as cold climate olive oil. I was intrigued, and as I had to buy three bottles to qualify for shipping, I bought the elderflower concentrate, the elderberry concentrate and the olive oil.
I had a taste of all three, and they are all exceptionally nice. The olive oil is bright green and has a fresh robust olive flavour that would be great paired with balsamic for dunking sourdough or in a salad dressing. I’ve yet to find something to do with the elderberry, but give me time!
The elderflower cordial I used to make a lemon and elderflower cake with a white chocolate cream icing and it turned out spectacularly.
I started with the basic recipe for vanilla cake and added to it. Details are on the recipe page!
The Curated Condiment 