Dandelion Jelly

continued from my other blog . I used the recipe from cdk recipes.


The kids and I spent the morning picking dandelions from the yard.

It took a long time to gather enough but the kids were good workers. You need 4 cups of just the yellow parts of the flowers. But as worked, we talked about why people would have wanted to eat the first flowers of the season. It was a good lesson on history and nutrition for them.

4 cups yellow parts of dandelion blossoms
3 cups boiling water
4 1/2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons Freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 package powdered pectin

Seperate the yellow parts of the flower from the green. The green parts will make your jelly bitter. I didn't get it perfect, but tried to be very careful. This took a long, long time so be prepared. And it takes more flowers than you would even think. But the more blossoms, the more flavor for the jelly.

Bring the water to a boil and fill the water with dandelion blossom shreds. Simmer over very gentle heat about 10 minutes. Pour the water and blossoms through a strainer. Press the blossoms as dry as possible to extract the maximum amount of water. Add more blossoms to the strained water and simmer for about 10 minutes. Continue simmering and straining until all the blossoms are used up. Add water as necessary to keep the level at 3 cups. For the final strain use a tea or coffee strainer to make sure you have all the flower bits out.

Combine water with lemon juice, sugar and pectin. Bring to roiling boil and stir until sugar is dissolved. Boil hard for one minute. Skim. Pour into hot jars and seal.

This batch didn't set very well so it's more like syrup- but we had it on pancakes this morning so it turned out accidently perfect! It has an apple, pear, honey flavor.