Every May to June, elderflower season only lasts about three weeks. Sam takes himself off down the lanes around Bridport with a bag and comes back with armfuls of the stuff, which all heads straight to the Lab to be turned into cordial and, eventually, sorbet. The whole place smells like a hedgerow for a fortnight. It's one of those ingredients you can't really buy your way into properly — you have to go and pick it, at exactly the right moment, before the heads start to brown. (If you fancy having a go yourself next year, we wrote up how to pick elderflowers and what to make with them.)
That's the whole reason we make an Elderflower sorbet at all. It's a genuinely fussy flavour to get right, and we only think it's worth doing because we know exactly where ours comes from.
The Elderflower sorbet spritz
This is barely a recipe, which is rather the point on a hot afternoon.
- A generous scoop of Baboo Elderflower sorbet in a chilled wine glass
- Top up slowly with cold Prosecco, letting it fizz up around the sorbet rather than pouring it in one go
- A sprig of mint or a curl of cucumber, if you have one to hand
The sorbet does two jobs at once — it's the flavour and the ice, so there's nothing melting and watering things down halfway through your drink. It also means the whole thing gets more elderflower-forward as it goes, rather than less, which is the opposite of most spritz-style drinks.
The non-alcoholic version
Swap the Prosecco for a good sparkling elderflower presse, or even just cold soda water with a splash of elderflower cordial in it. The sorbet already carries plenty of flavour on its own, so you're not really losing anything — just the fizz gets a bit gentler. This is the version our kids actually ask for, incidentally, minus the mint, which they consider an unnecessary complication.
A few others worth trying
Once you've got the idea, it works with most of our sorbets. A couple we've tried and liked:
Sicilian Blood Orange sorbet spritz — a scoop of Blood Orange sorbet with Prosecco and a splash of soda, or Aperol if you want something closer to a proper Aperol Spritz. The blood orange already has that same bittersweet, slightly floral note, so it needs very little else.
Raspberry sorbet spritz — a scoop with a dry rosé, topped with a little soda. This one's closer to a summer garden party than an aperitivo, and it looks the part too.
Alcohol-free, the same rule applies to both — soda water or a good fruit presse in place of the wine, and you'll still get a proper drink rather than a consolation prize.
Why we bother with all this
We're a gelato company that ends up talking about drinks quite a lot in summer, and the honest answer is that our sorbets were never really designed as an afterthought to the gelato. Elderflower, Raspberry and Blood orange all get the same treatment as everything else here — real fruit, nothing artificial, and quite a lot of fuss taken over getting them right. It seems a shame not to use them for more than a scoop in a cone.
If you make one of these, or come up with a combination of your own, we'd love to hear about it.
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Next up: Annie's birthday cake, the one that never has any leftovers.