3 Ground Elder Sugar Recipes

Slice of ground elder cake with green icing and the fresh plant

As part of my Sweet Wilds collection (desserts and sweet treats made from foraged and home-grown ingredients), here I introduce three ways you can turn Ground Elder into something sugar-coated. It has a tangy, refreshing flavour which is quite delightful!

Ground Elder (Aegopodium podagraria ) also goes by the names; herb gerard, bishop's weed, goutweed, gout wort, snow in the mountain, English or wild master wort.

Why use Ground Elder?

Ground Elder contains good amounts of vitamin C and various other medicinal benefits including being used to treat rheumatism and arthritis.

Its names goutweed, gout wort (wort means plant of worth) and bishop's weed come from using this plant to treat gout which is the result of eating too much rich foods. Rich foods was the food of bishops and monks as far back as the middle ages.

1. Fresh Ground Elder leaf icing

Blend the leaves to a fine, herby pulp, mix with icing sugar the lemon juice to a smooth paste and drizzle over cakes or biscuits. Mixture makes enough to ice one cake.

Ingredients

2 tbsp fresh ground elder leaves
50 g unrefined icing sugar
1 tsp lemon juice

pan of cooking ground elder stems for candied stem sugar

2. Ground Elder stem sugar

This recipe is made from candying the Ground elder stems then blending them with sugar. Finely chop the stems and place in a dry frying pan over a medium to high heat. Allow to heat up then add the sugar and watch sizzle for a few minutes as the sugar and moisture is absorbed. Stir to check the process and take off the heat when the plant starts to become dry and the bottom of the pan white with the dried sugar.

Scrape off the sugar and allow to cool. Weigh the candied stem sugar and ad the same amount of sugar to a spice blender and blend to a powder with the candied stems. Use in Ground elder shortbreads.

Ingredients

50 g ground elder stems
25 g golden granulated sugar
Extra sugar (to be measured)

3. Dried Ground Elder sugar

Dry the leaves. I just leave them out in a warm room, but you could use a dehydrator or place in a warm (but turned off) oven. Blend to a powder and mix well with the icing sugar. Use to dust over Ground Elder shortbreads.

Ingredients