This is something you can do as an adult or with kids, as a distraction. We all know what it's like to be bored and maybe scared and your trying to keep it all together. The plants won't bloom for another couple of weeks but they will bloom. Dandelions always bloom.
DANDELIONS ARE COMING!
Most of these recipes can be changed around to any spices you wish as long as you keep the edible flowers in edible recipes.
FIRST OFF DANDELION
We don’t think of all of these as flowers but they really are.
Dandelion Fritters:
2 cups dandelion flowers with the green bits cut off
1/3 cup flour
1/3 (or so) cup milk, water is fine if you don’t have milk
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup corn meal (adds texture, if you don’t have it replace with wheat, rice or corn flour)
1 egg
dash of salt, pepper, thyme and rosemary
oil enough to fry fritters
Mix dry ingredients, add egg and other liquid, mix well. Batter may remain lumpy. Dip dandelion tops fully, covering entire blossom, into batter and add to hot oil, being really careful of splatter. Fry until golden light brown and drain on a towel.
You can do a sweet variation with sweeter spices and herbs too, like cinnamon, a teaspoon of sugar, cloves and cardamom, instead of savory spices and herbs.
Fennel and Figs Bread:
This was originally written for the Big Bend area of Texas and was a Fig bread, but plums are about to be in fruit along the Greenway Bike Path in Minneapolis. Get some.
1 cup sliced, pitted plums
1/4 cup rum
3/4 cup white flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup whole oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon fennel seeds
1 cup soured or buttermilk (sour milk just has a bit of vinegar added to regular milk)
1 Tablespoon
veg oil
1 egg
Preheat oven to 350.
Soak plums in booooooooze, you won’t need to warm the alcohol or anything— your house is probably warm enough, mine is. Mix dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl. Mix wet ingredients into small bowl. Create a well in the dry ingredients, add wet and mix until similar to biscuit dough. Add plums. Mix and form dough into a ball and place
in a cast iron pan and bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Scottish shortbread:
2 cups flour
1/4 cup corn starch
1/2 cup sugar
3-5 Tablespoons dried EDIBLE flowers. (Don’t use all lavender, it’ll be too much lavender taste.)
dash of salt
3/4 cup butter, cold and cubed
additional sugar for dusting the top
Preheat oven to 325. In large mixing bowl or food processor bowl combine flour, cornstarch, sugar, salt, and flowers. Use a combination of flowers such as dandelions, roses, lavender,
violets and lilacs. They’re all yummy.
Don’t use flowers that have been sprayed with anything. Mix well or pulse. Add butter and cut or pulse into flour mix. This should look like wet sand. Mush into a baking pan,
making sure it’s flat and firm. Bake for 20-25 minutes, remove from oven and sprinkle with sugar. Score top into pie slice shapes. Allow to cool and serve. YUMMY.
Violet syrup:
Pick as many violets as you can, making sure they aren’t sprayed with grossness. Take off the leaves and stems. Boil enough water to cover the violets in a small stainless or glass pan.
Turn off the heat and add the violets, cover and let set for 24 hours. Strain, reserving liquid, making sure to press every bit of goodness out of the flowers. For every cup of flower “juice”
add 2 cups of sugar. In a glass or stainless pot cook over the lowest heat until sugar dissolves. Do not boil or the color will disappear, it'll still be yummy it just won't be purple. To turn the syrup purple add 5-10 drops lemon or lime juice. This will keep in the fridge for six months or so.
Fresh roasted Dandelion root tea:
You lucky duck! You don’t spray your garden and you have dandelions! You can make Dandelion root tea!
Harvest dandelion, roots and all. Pluck them out of the ground using a shovel or a dandelion harvesting tool, such as a big fork or spoon. Rinse the whole thing, save the greens for a salad and the tops for the recipes above. Chop the roots off the greens. Pat the roots dry and chop like you would a carrot. Roast in a 200 degree oven for two hours or so. If they bend at all, roast them more, this really is a recipe of opinions so you get to decide. When they are dry and roasted grind them up in a home kitchen grinder, a blender, a coffee grinder, chopping by hand is a pain.
Add a Tablespoon of ground roots to a cup and pour hot water over them, let steep for ten minutes or so.
Strain and drink. Don’t drink dandelion tea if you’re on medication for a bacterial infection.
Dandelion FUNDOUGH,
like playdough but with dandelions:
A big huge gigantic handful of dandelion flowers
1 cup water
2 cups flour
1/3 cup kitchen salt
2 Tablespoons veg oil
1-2 Tablespoons Cream of Tartar
Add boiling water and dandelion flowers to blender and blend until the dandelions are completely broken up. Add dandelion water and everything else but the flour to a bowl and mix, then add flour. Mix well. Mix with your hands. Gush fundough around. Have fun! Play!
