How to make elder blossom syrup

This tastes like flowers and spring, and it´s super easy to make, and costs almost nothing.

Do you know elderflowers? They look like this:

And they grow practcally everywhere right now. At the side of the road, between fields, some of you might even have them in your gardens. You can smell them when you´re close, they have an intensely sweet, flowery aroma, which I love to inhale.
For me elderflowers remind me of that sunny spring some years ago, when I visited my sister in law after she´d just had her baby, and we strolled through the London parks with our kids and collected them, to make tea. I even wrote elderblossom syrup as a kind of signature drink to my favourite character in my first book - when he´s got a bottle of that in his fridge, all is well.

So, elderblossoms, here I come.

For your syrup, you need one kilogramm of sugar, which you cook with two litres of water.
While you dissolve the sugar, prepare the blossoms you picked on your last trip out:

Thoroughly check them for beetles or spiders or caterpillars. We found several, and Miro happily took them all outside. Remove all the leaves and stems.

Let your sugar-water cool down until it doesn´t boil anymore, but is still warm, and throw your blossoms into it.

Add lemon. I took two, but next time, I´d take some more. If you can´t find untrated lemons, you can also just squeeze out the juice and add it.

Let sit for... well, as long as you want to, I guess over night is good, some recipes even say up to fve days, but we couldn´t really wait, so we went with 6 hours.

Then you pour the whole stuff through a filter, or a fine mesh, and voila_you made some fine syrup!
If you store it in airtight bottles, without too much light, you can keep them for almost a year - until the next elderblossoms grow :)

Music:

I fell in love with this song. It starts so soft and calm and slow, and it evolves into such a bliss. I love the whole scene in the garden, all the various musicians, and I wish I could just be there and join them.