Dandy Jam!

 After my last jaunt in dandelion land I was inspired to try my hand at making dandelion jelly. The soft scent of the blooms, and that rich yellow color seemed to promise a delicate lovely spread.

I picked a huge basket of flowers, easily done since my yard was blanketed in them! I had to move carefully to avoid stepping on a bee, and I picked only the flowers that were fully opened. Don't worry, there were still plenty left for the bees.

 Then began the grueling process of trimming all the flowers. The stem and green bit on the bottom of the bud is rather bitter, so i carefully chopped off most of the green bits. This diminished the volume of flowers quite a bit, and as we worked (I drafted the boyfriend into flower dissection duty) the petals seemed to shrink more and more into the measure cup.

 Finally! Four cups petals, four cups water, two cups honey, and some lemon juice. I simmer that a while, then strained out most of the flowers.  I wanted to keep a few petals in the mix to give it some body and color. I added 1 1/2 packets of low-sugar pectin. One packet just wasn't doing it, even after cooking down a while it was thin. I ended up cooking it down quite a while to get it syrupy enough.

 I canned in the usual way, it made 9 wee little jars (Not many for all the hours of prep work!) The jelly set up fairly thick (much to me surprise and delight) and spreads nicely.

I'll be gifting many of these, you guys better understand what a precious thing this is!

My breakfast the next morning was light and flowery! It's a spectacular yellow color, and has a subtle honey taste. Just perfect for a spring morning.

Have you ever made Dandelion Jelly? How did it go?