Its that time of year again! You all know what I mean! As  soon as the weather gets warmer those little yellow buggers pop up every where, Yep Dandelions!

The garden is full of them, and we’ve declared war! I’ve dug up a lot especially around the big stumps, and honestly I had no idea that the roots went so damn deep!! But we still have a lot that need to go including ones that are all over the grass. I will have to finish the weeding ASAP! So for now I’m on dandelion patrol to try and limit the spread of the seeds, I’ve been grabbing the flowers as they emerge.

As we follow a few different self reliance and foraging sites, I have seen all sorts of ideas that use dandelions in the recipe. But there is one that has popped up all over social media over the last couple of weeks and that is Dandelion Honey.

So after a most recent cull of the flowers, I searched for a recipe to use. I found a recipe on tinandthyme.uk. I did change it a little, but only because I didn’t have all the ingredients.

Ingredients
350 g dandelion heads – remove green parts if really keen
1  lemon – thinly sliced-(I used a satsuma and bottled lemon juice)
1 litre water
750 g golden granulated sugar or thereabouts
Vanilla pod (or flavouring if you’re me)

Instructions
-Simmer dandelion heads, lemon (or satsuma and lemon juice) and vanilla pod (or flavouring) in water for 20 minutes in a covered pan. Pour into a glass bowl and cover. Leave to steep overnight.

-Pour through a sieve extracting the liquid by pressing down with a spoon to make about 750ml.
-Discard the flowers and simmer the liquid in an uncovered pan with the sugar (same number of grams of sugar as mls of liquid) for about 45 minutes or until the mixture becomes syrupy and drips slowly off a spoon.

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-Pour into two warm sterilised glass jars and leave to cool.

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The verdict was that it was ok, and similar to honey, put still had a plant under tone to the flavour. It was quite fun to make and really simple! I’m sure there would be much tastier flowers that you could use instead though.
I will probably have a go at making some of the bread that uses honey in the recipe and swap it out for this to see how it turns out.

That’s all from the kitchen for today, we will have more news from the garden soon.

That’s all for now, Stay safe and stay well.

Kiera & Tony