Elderflower Ice Cream & Elderflower Cordial

I have been wanting to try my hand at making ice cream from scratch for ages. However, my house had one of the old-fashioned ice cream churns, and... well, in all honesty, I didn't want it so much that I was prepared to sit there turning a crank for a couple hours. This week, however, I picked up an electric ice cream maker on sale– let the confections commence! This Cuisinart and I are going to be good, good friends. I have any number of ideas bumping around in my brain, so there will probably be quite a few ice cream recipes popping up here throughout the summer.

Elderflower isn't a flavor that most of us here in the US are familiar with– for some odd reason, we just don't eat it here. This is a mistake. Elderflower has a beautiful, delicate flavor that's difficult to describe– sweet and lightly floral, with faint notes of citrus and herbs. I first encountered it when I spent a week in Denmark to visit a friend. She had picked up a container of ice cream from a local shop, and one of the flavor stripes was... elderflower? I was a little bewildered, but instantly fell in love. It's also used in a refreshing spring drink, elderflower cordial. Both the beverage and the ice cream are based on a sweet syrup made from elderflower blossoms, sugar, and citric acid. It's hard to track down in stores in the states, so I order online from l'Epicerie. A bottle of it lasts quite a while if you're just using it for drinks, but ice cream will run down your supplies a little faster.