early summery

Cherry blossoms are now gone - in Tokyo or in Kyoto - and we are blessed with lovely weather, a little warmer than normal it is like in May. A perfect weather to make ice-cream for those of us non-regular-ice-cream-makers.

I found the recipe of Elderflower Ice-Cream in Martha Stewart Living Annual Recipes 2002 (Oxmoor House, 2001) several months back when I was still in Hawaii and didn't know where to get elderflower cordial that is required in the recipe. I knew and long loved elderflower cordial in Japan though, so I clipped the recipe and waited till I am back in Japan. Now I was and got a pretty bottle of cordial without problem, so I went. (In the book, this ice-cream was meant to accompany berry tart - but who cares? I don't.)


To me, elderflower is very English - so far, every elderflower product I have ever seen was either found in, or from the UK. I haven't even seen fresh flowers - I would really love to one day, but for now I have some resources to get a bottle of this sweet and soothing beverage.

The recipe of elderflower ice-cream was fairly plain, with common ice-cream ingredients plus cordial. The thing was, I don't own an ice-cream maker at home - nor any room to accommodate one. But you have to live with what you have and what you don't, right?

I whipped up the ice-cream mixture and put it in the freezer to freeze, during which I manually churned it a couple of time, trying to smoothen the cream. The result, unfortunately, was't as smooth as I had wished it to be, with some bits of unwanted crystals mixed into the cream.


It was okay though, my ice-cream was definitely charmed with the sweet aroma and light flavor of elderflower cordial, no matter how it was innocently-looking as if it had been ordinary vanilla ice cream. A little plain it might have tasted, but along with a strawberry or two for a bit of tartness, the ice-cream made a dessert lovely as the early summery day like this.