Short version:
Now is the perfect time to forage elderflowers if you don’t have any of your own growing. They make an excellent cordial and great fritters. They taste like they smell. Eat only the flowers. Green parts contain toxins.
The view from our garden.
This feels like a cheat because we’re not growing our own flowers, but this is definitely one for the little one. Our neighbours two doors down have an absolutely amazing elderflower tree that is around 14 feet tall. My little one looks at it longingly from our garden. Lucky us, the lovely neighbour has brought some round for us during lockdown. However, it is no hardship taking daily exercise in one of the many amazing South London parks or wooded areas. I am astounded at how many elderflower trees there are. I’m afraid I have no advice on how to grow these. We would love to grow our own, but I’m afraid our garden is much too small to accommodate another tree. To be honest our garden is too small to accommodate any trees but I was still determined to shoehorn a small pear, apple, cherry and one ever expanding fig tree. We have two mulberry bushes, but they are little dwarf things, so I don’t count them as trees.
How to harvest
If you are foraging then find a nice park, away from roads, with no obvious ownership. Even in non-COVID-19 times I would advise picking blooms that at head height and above. The elderflowers I’ve seen tend to be around the edges of parks or by railway fences. The kind of places that I’ve seen people when they’re caught short. Little one gets to harvest by sitting on hubby’s shoulders.
Avoid the ones lower down that can be sneezed on or weed on.
Look for clusters of flowers that are newly opened. Avoid any that look like they are starting to turn brown at all. Give them a little shake to dislodge any insects. I have read that picking them early in the morning is when they are most fragrant. We have just made do with whenever we have managed to persuade little madame out. She absolutely loves picking the flowers. She loves the smell and she loves the taste.
The closed buds at the bottom and a lovely creamy white cluster of tiny flowers.
How they taste
They basically taste how they smell.
They are great in a cordial. Click here for this recipe from River Cottage we used, except (with lockdown shopping hinderances) we had no lemons so I used clementines instead. We also had no citric acid and made half the quantity and used around 350g of sugar rather than 500g.
We tried a second batch a few days later and again, with the lockdown, we used sugar that I pulled out from the back of the cupboard. As you can see, it is a much darker colour. The taste was quite different. It had the more honeyed sticky taste of brown sugar.
The washed batch of flowers 
After soaking overnight, little one helped me strain it and then we heated it with sugar. 
First bottle with the white sugar was used within 2 days. 
We had it with appropriately flower shaped ice. 
The next batch was much darker and had the taste you get when you used unrefined cane sugar.
We also tried adding dried lavender to another batch. If you do this, add the lavender after the mixture has cooled a little. Our lavender one had a tea quality to it.
There is something rather lovely about home-made cordial, although maybe it’s the whole process of foraging with the little one, having her help with the stirring and straining and watching her wear the funnel as a hat and charge around the kitchen that just makes it wonderful. She absolutely loved the cordial. She loved it most neat. That was ok though as I had added more water and less sugar when making it. So er…. Maybe in fact we looked at the recipe and then ignored it.
We’ve also made elderflower fritters using this recipe. These were light, crispy and very tasty. We served it without the extras and it was still lovely. It would have been amazing with vanilla ice-cream though.
We left some stems on for easy handling 
In the batter 
In the oil 
Little clouds of fritters. We held the stems to eat them and ate only the battered flowers.
Warning
The only edible parts of this plant are the flowers and the RIPE berries later in the year. All other parts contain cyanogenic glycosides. This website here explains about the chemistry of it. When using the flowers for cordial or fritters cut away the large green stems. The smaller ones that hold clusters of flowers together are fine. Cooking breaks down the toxins, so elderflowers are considered safe to eat. However, as with all new (and foraged) foods, it may be wise to start with trying a little as you may have unknown allergies.
Not a Horticulturist 
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