Camera came home!!! Elderflower fritters!

After a long hiatus around the woods, my camera finally made its way home and with it, my pictures for making elderflower fritters. You may still be able to find some along the roadsides, but blossoms are making way to green berries, so this recipe may need to be just set aside for next summer. No worries, I will link you then :)

So first of all, you need yourself a big pile of flowers. The flowers themselves make a wonderful tea that works as an expectorant as well as a mild laxative. If you feel a cold coming on, take a handful of dried elderflower and a handful of dried peppermint, pour boiling water over them and let them steep into a tea. Drink the tea just before bed to promote sweating and detoxifying.

Okay fritters. You need a some flower heads:

You want to leave the stem on and pick them early enough so there is lots of pollen, that is where most of the flavor is.  You can inspect them for bugs at this point as well.  Some people like to rinse them off with cool water, but I don't because I pick them in a very rural area so I know there is no road poison and I want to preserve the pollen.

You want some kind of light oil, like olive or grape seed.  The benefits of the flowers are pretty much compromised by frying them anyway, so if your going to kill yourself with grease, at least use a decent and flavorful oil.

Put your oil in a pan to about an inch deep and turn your flame on medium-low.

Then, you make the batter.  Now, there is a ton of different recipes on line.  You can certainly pick the one that you want, but in my opinion, wild food is all about working with what you have.  I happened to have a half bottle of almost-flat Coke that was well on its way to going to waste.  The batter is a cup or 2 of flour, 2 eggs and almost-flat Coke until the mix is like pancake batter.  There is no need for exact amounts, but make sure you have enough for all your flowers.  At this point, you will hold your bundle by the stem and dip the heads into the batter, coating well.

Now, for the fun part.  Holding your dipped flower head by the stem, drop them in the pan of hot oil.  It's very dramatic.  It will not take but a few seconds before they will be a golden brown color, so keep your eyes open.

When your flower heads are a pretty brown color, take them out with a pair of tongs and put them on a rack or paper towel to drain.

At this point sprinkle them with super-fine sugar and eat them off of the stem (The stem serves as a "handle" throughout the process and is not eaten). They are very sweet and go well with ice cream while they are still hot. I think they stand alone as a meal as they are very filling.  One or two heads with a scoop of ice cream makes for a cool lunch on a hot summer day.

Enjoy!