Time to make dandelion jelly!
Also known as dandelion honey or cramaillote, dandelion jelly tastes like floral honey without the sickening sweetness. It’s sunshine in a jar.
It’s also simple to make, although labor intensive. Picking the flowers and separating the yellow part from the green parts takes hours. I pick a big mixing bowl of flowers and I get two to three cups of yellow petals from that. After that, you just make “tea” from the petals. It’s OK if they oxidize while you pick through them, but pick the petals and make the tea right after picking the blooms off the plant. You use the tea in a jelly recipe exactly as you would fruit juice. You can use the petals of any edible flower to make jelly, but make sure they have not been sprayed with any pesticides or other chemicals.
I made this the first time last year. It was too runny because I used a bit too much tea, but still delicious. This year I’m adding the zest and juice of one orange and one lemon.
It’s done! It has set well and tastes very good! It’s darker and stronger in flavor this year. I boiled down the tea a bit to the four cups I needed for the recipe, to concentrate the flavor some and avoid wasting tea like I did last year.
