Foraged Elderflower Pancakes

These tick all the boxes - foraging for wild food, making fire and cooking for yourself outdoors!

The first thing to do is make your fire. We carefully removed the grass with a spade to make a square fire pit. As an added challenge, you can start your fire with a fire striker.

Once the kindling and smaller sticks are burning, push the ends of three logs into the fire. As you can see from the image, this creates a handy platform to rest your skillet on. Wait until the flames have died down and the logs are smouldering before you start cooking.

Leave someone to guard the fire and send your tribe to forage for elderflower heads.

Give the elderflowers a gentle shake to remove any little insects - avoid washing the flowers as you will wash away the blossom and the flavour.

To make the batter:

Put 100g of flour with a pinch of salt into a suitable mixing bowl. Crack an egg into the middle of the flour and slowly start to beat it together. Add milk (or sparkling water) to the batter as you mix. You will need approximately 200ml of liquid.

Mixing the flour in bit by bit helps to prevent lumps, do remember this is wild cooking, so the odd lump or two won’t matter.

When the batter is ready, place your skillet or frying pan onto the fire and drop in a knob of butter. Dip the elderflower head into the batter and drop in onto the hot skillet. When the batter looks set, flip it over to cook the other side.

Serve sprinkled with icing sugar and rose petals. Eat, sitting around the fire. Bliss!

*Remember to put the fire out when it’s time to leave.