elderberries.com

Today was a fun day… last week, I ordered some elderberries from Ulrich Young, who posted here a while back that he had elderberries available in Oklahoma. They arrived in great shape yesterday and were screaming to become a pie, some syrup, and some elderberry jam. The pie and syrup berries got their wishes today, but the jam will have to wait until tomorrow. I started by shining up the kitchen and laying everything out. (Let me add here I’m NOT a cook. I love to eat, but that enjoyment has never seemed to translate into cooking skill. I’m working on it, though.)

My first project was an elderberry pie. I went with the Autumn Fruits recipe since it looked simple and traditional, and since I didn’t feel like trying to make a pie crust. The first step was cleaning and de-stemming the berries, since there were still some small stems in the batch. I’ve read that the best way to get berries off stems when they’re fresh is to use a  fork and gently comb them off like hair, but with these stems being so small and soft from having been in the juice so long, it was a slightly more painstaking process. And did I say messy? It was a MESSY process. So messy, in fact, that I decided to get creative with all the juice as well and tie-dye a shirt with it. The shirt’s not done yet, though, so  I’ll save that for another post.

The pie itself was easy… fill the crust with elderberries, then pour sugar/flour/salt over that, add some lemon juice, put a top crust on, and bake. Of course, I say easy,  but when you end up keeping way too much of the juice as I did, you end up with a very runny pie. Note to self and others: the extra juice will not simply cook away, so be sure to strain berries well before adding them to the pie. Otherwise, you’ll get… well… you’ll see in the photos. (In my defense, this was my first pie.)

First I noticed that the pie oozed a lot of juice as it baked. It smelled good, but didn’t look so pretty, and I had to put a tin pan on the oven rack underneath it to prevent my oven from becoming a sticky, smoky, burnt elderberry mess from the drippings. On the inside, the pie was almost completely liquid. It had a good flavor, but it really wasn’t pie, so much as a fruity syrupy crusty berry thing that went well with whipped cream (my other failure emerged here when I realized I’d forgotten to buy vanilla ice cream). The texture of the pie was intriguing, as elderberries do have tiny seeds. The seeds are fine to eat, but they keep enough of their crunch to create an almost gritty feel when eating them. With this in mind, I’m betting an apple-elderberry pie would be delicious, using just enough apple to make the texture smoother.

I made elderberry syrup today too, and that was an entertaining experience as well, but I’ll save that too for another post.

(One last thanks to Ulrich of Oklahoma, who provided the elderberries for my recipe attempts. He has more and will ship, so contact him at robcrkranch@hotmail.com if you’re interested in ordering.)

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