French Toast with Elderberry Sauce and Lemon Drizzle

French Toast with Elderberry Sauce and Lemon Drizzle

In honor of the upcoming Raton Lemonade Day (Saturday, July 5) and my Fern Fairy Lemonade booth that we’re going to have there with my friend Isla I decided this week would be a great opportunity to make something with elderberries and lemons. For those who don’t know, elderberries are a small round purple berry that grows around the Raton and Trinidad area. It most likely grows in other places as well. This is just where I know they grow. Every year in the fall, my family usually goes out to pick elderberries and stock up on them. The spot that we pick them from is literally just some trees on the side of the road on the way to my work (Soco Skateland in Colorado) or the Trinidad’s Farmers Market. They usually bloom around this time of year and is part of why we decided to use them in our lemonade and also in the logo for Fern Flower Lemonade (I’ll talk about the logo more in a little bit).

Elderberries are really delicious berries, kind of like a blueberry, but definitely not the same. They are similar, but they still taste very different. Elderberries are bitter, and they will also give you a stomachache if you eat too many of them raw. My favorite way to eat them is turning them into jam and then having them on toast with cream cheese. I feel like the cream cheese balances out the texture of the elderberry jam. Elderberries also have a lot of health benefits, it’s what they mean when they say food is medicine because elderberries are delicious but also our really good medicine in a lot of ways. I always take something that’s elderberry infused, syrup or jam, or an elderberry gummy when I get sick. They usually help and even when they don’t, they still taste really good so there’s no harm to it.

I’m pretty sure the first time I tried elderberry syrup was when we got an elderberry syrup kit from the tea shop (The Trinidad Tea Shop), and we made that up. That was very good, not quite as good as the fresh ones I think but obviously those were dried so the taste will be different. You can actually find a lot of different, cool ingredients out here that you might have never heard of but are also good for your health. In addition to the elderberry’s there is stuff like Kota tea and skunk berries or also known as lemonade berries. These things are good for your health, and you can usually find them very easily. In Raton, we have both skunk berries, and Kota tea just in our own backyard.

Back to the logo, local elderberries are part of why I chose to put them in the logo. It’s something you can find around here and it’s something that’s important to me and this area. Same thing with the little horny toad lizard. They are reptiles that you can find around here very easily. I’ve seen many of them in the almost four years I’ve lived here. Once a little kid brought one that they found outside into my job (definitely a fun memory), and I even got to pet it. Even though you can’t really find ferns around here as much (or at all maybe). They’re also a beautiful plant that reminds me of a lot of crafts. I do multiple different types of crafts regularly and even right now as I am writing this, I am literally crocheting a rainbow flag with the leftover yarn I’ve found.

I really hope if you have a chance you’ll come check out my stand for lemonade day or maybe even check us out at the farmers market (Querencia Farm) and I hope you enjoy this week’s recipe! Next week we have my younger brother coming in to do a special onion day recipe and, in a few weeks, I think my other brother will be doing a recipe too. Enjoy!

French Toast Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoons milk
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon sugar
• A pinch of salt
• 8 pieces of bread
• Butter optional

French Toast Instructions:

• In a bowl mix together all the ingredients except the bread until combined.
• Once you have that all together, you want to start to heat up your pan with a little bit of butter. When that’s all heated up, you’ll want to take a piece of bread and lightly soak it in the egg mixture until it’s soaked all the way through.
• Place it in your pan, cook that one side until it is light golden brown. When it is, you want to flip it onto the other side and cook it about the same. You’ll probably want to cut a slice open to make sure it’s cooked all the way through.

Ingredients for the Lemon Drizzle: (Recipe from “Milk Bar Kids Only”

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice (plus more if desired)

Lemon Drizzle Instructions:

• Mix together the lemon juice and the powdered sugar until smooth

Elderberry Sauce Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup of elderberries
• 1/4 cup of sugar
• 1 1/2 cups of water

Elderberry Sauce Instructions:

• Place all of the ingredients in a pot together over medium heat. Cook together for about 20 minutes or until it is a sauce like thickness. When it’s done, just take it off of the heat and allow it to cool a bit before drizzling it over your delicious French toast!