Le champagne des fées

Elderflowers are in bloom so we decided to try making a naturally bubbly–aka lightly fermented–French limonade called Le champagne des fées (Fairy Champagne). My son sat at the kitchen counter patiently pulling the tiny elderflowers (¼ inch each) off of 15 umbel heads. It took an hour for about 2 cups of flowers. The resulting ivory-colored pile was one of the prettiest things I have seen in a while. I had no idea that each teeny tiny flower was itself perfection.

St-Germain is an artisanal French liqueur made from fresh, hand-picked elderflower blossoms. On the bottle it says “made from a thousand flowers”. I always thought this was hyperbole, But now I understand.

Beauty x 1000

elderflowers (Sambucus canadensis)