It’s elderflower season again – one of the classic smells and tastes of summer!

We see those frothy white flowers growing wild all around and can’t bear to see them going to waste.

We’ve already made a large batch of elderflower cordial which will last us a good few months. In the past, there’s also been elderflower champagne and elderflower cakes too. This week, we decided to try some biscuits – elderflower shortbread to be precise.

There are various methods for incorporating the flowers’ flavour into the biscuit. We experimented with three – using cordial as one of the ingredients, infusing the sugar with elderflower bunches and finally incorporating the tiny petals into the biscuit mix itself.

We found that cordial made the biscuits a bit hard, crystalline and possibly too sweet. The infused sugar runs the risk of lots of creepy crawlies escaping into the sugar (even if you shake carefully) – and the resulting elderflower flavour wasn’t intense enough for us. The last technique worked best for us – by quite a long way actually, so that would be our recommendation. The resulting shortbread was moist and crumbly with a wonderful distinctive flavour – give them a go before those flowers disappear!

Elderflower shortbread

2018-06-24 11:57:15

Serves 8

Prep Time

10 min

Cook Time

1 hr

Total Time

1 hr 10 min

Prep Time

10 min

Cook Time

1 hr

Total Time

1 hr 10 min

Ingredients

1. 3 elderflower heads
2. 75g/3oz caster sugar
3. 175g/6oz plain flour
4. 75g/3oz fine semolina
5. 175g/6oz butter

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Instructions

1. Make sure the elderflower heads are free of insects and brown bits
2. Using scissors, carefully snip off the little flower heads add to the sugar and stir in. Allow to infuse for about an hour
3. Preheat the oven to 150ºC/300ºF/Gas mark 2
4. If using a mould, sprinkle it with semolina to prevent the dough from sticking
5. Put the elderflower-infused sugar, flour, semolina and butter into a food processor and combine for about 30 seconds or until lumps begin to form
6. Turn the mixture out on to a lightly floured work surface and bring together into a ball
7. Press the dough evenly into your mould (or baking tin). If using a mould, turn the dough out onto a baking sheet lined with parchment
8. Prick the top with a fork to prevent it from rising
9. Bake for about an hour or until the shortbread just begins to brown
10. Remove from the oven on to a wire cooling rack
11. While still a bit warm score the top with a knife into petticoat tails/portions
12. Once cooled completely, remove from the tin and cut into pieces
13. Store in an airtight container for up to a week

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