Hawthorn Flower Cordial

Hawthorn blossoms

Well it's blossoming so well at the moment and with the gorgeous hot sunshine, there is no better time to pick it and again make some delicious hawthorn flower cordial. I made this last year and it was just lovely and refreshing.

Hawthorn flowers are picked and snipped away from the stems and leaves. layer them in large jars sprinkling some caster sugar over them every inch or so as you layer them in.

In a saucepan, make some sugar syrup Sugar syrup; water, granulated sugar and lemon juice. Heated until the sugar is dissolved and boiled for about 3 minutes, then set aside to cool, adding a few tablespoons of Rosewater.

The cooled syrup is then poured into the jars of hawthorn flowers. With the lids screwed down loosely, the jars were stood in a saucepan on some newspaper and with some newspaper in between them to avoid any banging of the jars. Water is added to the pan - as much as the pan can allow without it covering the jars and brought to the boil. Even with the newspaper in, this was very noisy. Once brought to the boil, the heat was turned down to barely simmering and left for 1 hour.

Bottled hawthorn flower cordial

Allow to cool, lift the jars out and tighten the lids. When quite cold, strain and filter the flower syrup and bottle into sterilised bottles. Stored cool it will keep for months, once opened store in the fridge.

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