Every where I go walking at the moment I am spying elderflowers. Did you know that they have incredible health benefits? They are full of antioxidants, are anti-inflammatory and are so are good for my knees, and they also help with skin irritations if added to the bath, can be infused and the liquid used on the skin, or they can be used as a poultice. A tea made with dried elderflowers in the winter has also been shown to help with the immune system and ward off colds, flu, and other respiratory ailments.
I am always looking for ways to add free nutrition and medicinal benefits to my diet and so today I made these sweet Elderflower fritters for our dessert for lunch. I like them thicker, but if you want them more lacy you can add a bit more milk to the batter. The first time I made them Mr S did not want to try them, but he will eat them now. You can hardly taste the flowers. He likes them with sugar and lemon on them, or sometimes I will serve them with rosehip syrup and yoghurt or ice cream.
Ingredients
12 elderflower heads
¾ cups of plain flour
½ tsp of baking powder
¼ tsp of salt
1 tsp of icing sugar (powdered sugar)
¼ tsp of vanilla extract
1 egg
1 cup of milk
1 tbsp of melted butter
Oil or fat for shallow frying
Icing sugar to dust with.
Method
- Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and icing sugar in a bowl that is wider than your flower heads.
- Stir in the milk, beaten egg, melted butter and vanilla extract and beat the mixture until smooth
- Heat the oil or lard in a pan over a medium heat. It needs to be about a cm deep.
- Hold each elderflower by it’s stem and dunk into the batter mixture and place it into the hot oil. I wiggle it around a bit to make it spread out.
- The proper way to cook them is to et it fry until golden brown but do not turn it over.
- Drain on a paper towel. Cook the rest of your flowers in the same way.
- Cut of all the stems as close to the flowers as you can as these will be bitter and can cause you to have an upset stomach.
- I don’t like to do them in deep oil and so I fry them in a non stick pan with just a tiny bit of butter on and keep the stalk on, and then cut the stalk and return it to the frying pan to cook the other side.
- Put a dusting of icing sugar on the top.
This is one of the ways I can get the goodness of the flower inside of me. It is best to pick white blossom, and not cream, and to forage for them early in the morning on a sunny day. I always leave them spread out on a tea towel outside in the shade for an hour or so to let the bugs to escape, and I give them a light shake.
