Elderflower and strawberry jam – enticing sweet summer joy

If I had to assign a taste to being in love, it would be this jam. It smells just lovely of elderflower, it has a wonderful velvety texture combinde with sweet and fruity strawberries. My elderflower and strawberry jam.
I usually make enough to last the whole year and as a gift for friends.

Elderflower and strawberry jam: an absolute favourite

This jam tastes so good that a former roommate of mine spooned it straight out of the jar a few years ago. Unfortunately, he did that to all the jars in no time…

My elderflower-strawberry jam is an absolute favorite jam among my friends. And so I have given away many jars of it every year. And our visitors at home are always delighted when I put this jam on the breakfast table.

Elderflower and strawberry jam: enjoy jam in a climate-friendly way. With seasonal, regional ingredients

Nature has arranged it in a fantastic way, that tasty strawberries and fragrant elderflowers are in season at the same time.
This means that you can easily make this wonderfully delicious jam from regional and seasonal, home-grown ingredients. This jam gives you the opportunity to enjoy your breakfast roll with a very low carbon footprint.

Collect small jars from supermarket purchases: this is how you can store jam for free and in an environmentally friendly way

Tip: I always save screw-top jars that I collect from shopping goods. Those, in which vegetables were pickled, for example. These twist-off jars come free with their contents and you can use them again and again. For example, to store my homemade elderflower and strawberry jam in them.

When is the best time to harvest elderflowers?

Elderflowers begin to bloom in May and continue to blossom until late June.

Elderflowers are most aromatic on a warm, sunny day. It is best to pick them in the early afternoon when they have already received a lot of sun and are still in the sunshine.

You should shake the elderflowers gently immediately after picking them if there are still insects in them. To preserve the aroma, do not wash the umbels. Therefore, you should not pick them too low on the bush.

Rainy days are not suitable for picking elderflowers, as wet flowers have significantly less aroma.

Harvest the elderflowers away from busy roads so that the pollution is low.

It is advisable to harvest elderflowers early in the season. This is because the umbels are also very popular with aphids and other small animals. The longer the season has been going on, the more likely it is that the flowers are already infested.

Strawberry-elderberry jam in a short video

Here you can watch my elderberry-strawberry jam in a short video. The video ist in German, but the youtube subtitles should work just fine. Feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel for recipe videos, short food clips for my recipes and videos about foraged ingredients from the wild.

Strawberry elderberry jam: it’s best to make a year’s supply

Like all jams, my strawberry elderflower jam lasts a very long time. You can keep the jam for at least a year and enjoy it again and again.
This way you can easily make a year’s supply of this fantastic jam and enjoy the fragrant aroma of elderflowers and strawberries until the next season.

Tips for using elderflower and strawberry jam

The strawberry and elderflower jam also tastes great stirred into vegan yogurt or with semolina pudding and rice pudding.
To prevent the jam from fading so quickly and to keep its great, bright color, I recommend storing it in a dark place. Preferably in a cool place, such as a cellar.

More sweet vegan recipes

For those of you with a sweet tooth I recommend to also give these wonderful, vegan, sweet recipes a try.

• Dandelion honey – vegan, foraged on the meadows and preserved!
• Spruce tip honey – homemade vegan forest honey
• Vegan condensed milk – made from only 2 ingredients
• Key Lime Pie – Lime Cream Pie – vegan, true to the original
• Strawberry cake – vegan, with sponge cake and vanilla custard
• Pumpkin bread, spicy, with chocolate and walnuts
• Delicious rhubarb meringue tartelettes
• Pastéis de Nata, Portuguese custard pies
• Poppy Seed Streusel Cake – a whole baking tray – vegan

Elderflower and strawberry jam: the preparation in pictures

Here I show you step by step on photos how I prepare the elderflower and strawberry jam. Then I’ll go straight on to the recipe.

Ingredients for about 3 liters of elderflower and strawberry jam:

1 litre of apple juice (vegan, some are filtered in a non-vegan way)
1 lemon, sliced ​​(organic and untreated)
16 elderflower umbels
1000 g gelling sugar 2:1 (jam sugar 2:1)
1 kg strawberries

Preparation:

1. Add the lemon slices and elderflowers to the apple juice.
2. Let it steep for two hours.
3. Bring it to the boil briefly and then leave it to steep overnight.
4. Strain it the next day.
5. Clean the strawberries and roughly chop them. Then puree them, but let small pieces remain.
6. Add the strawberries and gelling sugar to the juice.
7. Bring the elderflower and strawberry jam to the boil.
8. Boil for about 4 minutes while stirring.
9. Put some jam on a cold plate and do a gelling test. If the strawberry-elderberry jam remains too runny, stir in a little more lemon juice and continue to simmer until the desired consistency is achieved when testing for gelling.
10. Immediately pour the finished elderberry-strawberry jam into clean screw-top jars that have been rinsed with boiling water.
11. Immediately screw the jam jars tightly shut and leave to cool.
12. Stored in a dark place that is not too warm, the jam will last for at least a year.

Enjoy your hoemade jam!