Elderberry Adventures

Late summer and Autumn are a great time for foraging the hedges in the English countryside. I love making Sloe Gin and Bramble Jams from the bounty outdoors and this time I extended that to elderberries. My original intention was to be make elderflower champagne but I lost the window of opportunity for that due to all the summer events. Elderberries though are just as nice and I chose to make a pie.

Ingredients: Short crust pastry: 500g

5 tbsp sugar in half a cup of boiling water for the sugar syrup   

1.5 cups elderberries ( this does depend on the depth of your pie dish etc. You may need more or less depending on the size of the pie)           
                                                 

Method: I rolled out enough short crust pastry to fill out my pie dish and blind baked it in the oven for about 20 mins. In the meantime, I washed the elderberries removing any green or red ones and cooked them for about 5 mins in a sugar syrup. Once the pastry was ready, I poured the elderberry mixture onto the pie dish. Now I love the look of lattice pastry and figured it wasn't that difficult at all. I divided the top half of the pastry or the cover into strips as shown in the picture and then alternating strips vertically onto the pie. I then folded alternate strips (see photo) and then laid the remaining strips in perpendicular. I'm hoping you will figure it out from the photos. All you then do is stick it in the oven at 180 for about 20-mins to half an hour or till the crust is nice and brown. The pie is lovely with a bit of vanilla ice cream. If you are more adventurous, try coconut ice-cream. The tartness of the elderberries is nicely complemented by the richness of the coconut ice cream.