Elderberry Jelly

The end of summer brings about the bounty of the season, one of our favourites is the Elderberry and this year has seen a bumper harvest. This jelly is well worth the effort of collecting, cleaning and sorting as just one day of labour will give you at least a year of pleasure as you add the jelly to sauces for a rich taste, or just a little dollop with fresh cold meats and cheese rather than using the less flavoursome commercial alternatives. What can be finer than your own seasonal preserves to add a little of the sunshine to your winter meals? A few simple ingredients combine here to make something rather special.


1300g Elderberries
1300g Cooking Apples

Peel of 1 Orange
1 Cinnamon stick
Granulated sugar as per instruction below.



1 Go out on a warm sunny day and collect your elderberries, remove stems to leave just the berries.

2 Place elderberries in a large deep pan.

3 Chop apples roughly, including skin and cores and add to the elderberries.

4 Pour 500ml cold water into the pan, place over heat and bring to the boil.

5 As soon as the apples have softened, turn off the heat, allow to cool a little and pass the mixture through a sieve into another pan or large container. Push as much pulp through the sieve as possible.

6 Use a measuring jug to see how much pulp you have then put pulp into a large deep pan again.

7 Add sugar to the pulp in the ratio of 475g sugar to every 500ml of Elderberry and apple pulp, place pan over heat again and bring back to the boil. Add the peel of the orange and the cinnamon stick.

8 Turn down to simmer and allow to cook. As scum appears on the surface, remove it with a spoon.

9 After about 30 minutes of simmering, begin to check if setting point has been reached by removing a small amount on a teaspoon and placing on a cool plate, in about 5 minutes touch the cooled preserve, if it feels jelly like then it is ready. If still too runny then continue to simmer and check every 10 minutes until the setting point is achieved.

10 Pour the jelly into sterile prepared kilner jars or jam jars, seal quickly and allow to cool.

11 Store until you are ready to use, enjoy.

Strawberry Puree

Got up this morning and remembered we had the first of the summer strawberries. Rather than just having the same old strawberries and cream I decided to make something different. So I made a puree to put into a yoghurt. To make the puree I used 250g of strawberries and 50g of Icing Sugar.
Method For Puree

1. Add the strawberries and icing sugar together in a liquidizer,
2. Blend these quickly and make sure it is properly blended,
3. When its done simply pass it through a sieve and if it does not all go through simply stir it round with a wooden spoon.

So after you have made the puree you can do loads with it. You could:

• Pour it over your homemade Ice Cream from our previous recipe,
• Make a yoghurt,
• Pour it over puddings
• Add to sumer drinks at your BBQ

So with our puree I simply stirred it into about 500g of Natural Yoghurt. Then stirred until fully mixed. Enjoy it with your breakfast or even as a little snack as it is good for you.

Great stuff from the Lad here, don't forget that you can apply the above to many of our berry fruits throughout the season, try Raspberries or Blackberries for instance. The puree can be made in a cooked form too, Lad can follow up on this soon. A cooked "coulis" is perfect for churning into an ice cream, sorbet or delice type dessert. Enjoy