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The pie had its minor issues (too much juice, couple missed stems), but there was still the elderberry syrup to save the day. I used the elderberry cordial recipe from Christmas Matters, and it was simple and easy. MUCH easier, in fact, than the pie, since there was no tedious de-stemming needed. I tossed the berries, stems and all, into a pot, covered with water and boiled until soft (in this case, that didn’t take too long since these berries had been sitting in their own juice a while). Then I strained the juice into a separate pan, using — don’t laugh — a mesh bag made for washing lingerie. (Hey, not everyone has a straining cloth, and the lingerie laundry bag worked great.)

Not wanting to waste anything, I squeezed out all the juice, leaving nothing but compressed seeds, stems and skins, which I tossed out. (Actually, my son begged to plant a clump of them in the front flowerbed, which I let him do. I’ll let you know in a year or so how that goes.)

Once I had all the juice strained out into a smaller pan, I added the sugar. The amount of sugar called for was a little surprising, seeming a bit high, but I went with it. (As a note, there’s a syrup in the recipe section that uses honey instead of sugar, so if you don’t want a LOT of sugar in your syrup, I recommend trying that one. I’ll probably try it myself next time, or maybe split the recipe to use half the sugar, and using half honey instead.)

Next I added the cloves, using ground cloves instead of the whole cloves in the recipe - and in my estimation, I overdid it somewhat (ground cloves are powerful stuff). Then, after simmering for another ten minutes, I poured it into a glass bottle and put it in the fridge. The bottle unfortunately doesn’t seal very well, so sadly I’ll probably have to toss what I don’t use in a week or so, since it won’t keep without being well sealed. But it’s not a major loss, since I really did overdo it on the cloves, and like the pie, my next syrup will be better. (This one’s good mixed with apple cider, though!)

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