A few years back, I was a member of a CSA share that regularly included edible flowers in with the lettuces, tomatoes, and zucchini. While I was charmed by the presence of these flowers, I was always flummoxed when it came to actually using them. If only Miche Bacher’s new book, Cooking with Flowers had been around then. I would have done so much more with those tasty blooms.
Organized by variety of flower, each section begins with details about the particular blossom being featured. Then come the recipes, which manage to straddle the line between being appealing new and still familiar enough to get the old salivary glands working (for instances, how about a scoop of Lilac Sorbet).
As a preserver, I’m particularly interested in the ways that flowers can enhance my preserves. I often used dried lavender buds in jams and jellies to add a floral note, but now I’m contemplating the ways that lilac, nasturtium, and rose petals could improve or add interest to my basic sweet spreads. Makes the mind boggle a little, doesn’t it?
This recipe for Dandelion Jam was originally intended to go in the book, but because of space constraints, was cut from the volume. Eric from Quirk knows I happen to have a thing for jams and so asked if I’d like to feature the recipe here. I said yes and here we are.
I’ve not made this jam, but having read the recipe, I do believe it should work. For a preserve like this one, cooking it up to 220 degrees F will improve your chances of getting a good set from it. Also, do note that while it instructs you to put the finished jam in sterilized jars and seal them, it also requires that you store them in the fridge. This is because the jam doesn’t have the proper acidity for boiling water bath canning.
Dandelion Jam
Ingredients
- 8 cups water
- 4 cups dandelion blossoms
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 1 3/4-ounce package powdered fruit pectin
- 5 1/2 cups sugar
Instructions
- Pour the water into a large saucepan and add dandelion blossoms. Bring mixture to a boil and continue boiling for about 5 minutes, or until water turns yellow.
- Pour the resulting tea through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl, pressing the flowers to get as much of the color and flavor through the strainer as you can. Discard blossoms.
- Place 3 cups of the tea in a medium saucepan and add lemon juice and pectin. Bring to a boil. Stir in the sugar and boil for 10 minutes, or until sugar dissolves.
- Pour mixture into sterilized half-pint jars and seal. Store refrigerated for up to 2 months.
I LOVE stuffed squash blossoms. And when the daylilies in my front yard are ready, they get the same treatment or are fried up into crisp starbursts. I also cultivate a nasturtium patch every year–those flowers are excellent on salads and sandwiches. Flowers have such beautiful and subtle flavors. I love cooking with them!
My teenage years were spent trying to impress one boy or another… I drove 30 miles to purchase edible flowers to top a cupcake I made. I imagine in my brain it seemed so romantic (and it is now that I think about it, but perhaps not for a 16 yr old boy?) Once presented, said boy quickly flicked flowers off the cupcake and stuffed the entire dessert in his mouth. Ah yes, silly teenage love.
(I thoroughly savored every bite..flowers included)
I used to eat nasturiums by the handfuls as a girl from my mom’s porch. I still love them.
I remember sucking the sweetness out of honeysuckle as a kid. Gathered violets from the lawn and tossed them with a salad or as decor on top of a cupcake.
I have made rose water a few times and put it in jam with raspberries. Yum. Want to try stuff with lilacs, maybe the ones in the yard are not too far gone.
Zucchini blossoms, stuffed with goat cheese and herbs. Lovely appetizer!
Squash Blossoms stuffed with goat cheese and mint, chive flowers in salads and as garnishes on deviled eggs..violets as cake decorations
As kids we used to eat the bottoms of these yellow flowers that grow like crazy here in Arizona. The bottom portion had nectar. Fast forward to a few years ago when my daughter was working for the forest service, one of their duties was to pull out one particular non-native invasive plant-my precious yellow flowers from my childhood!! They’re called the Dalmation Toadflax. Anyway, I’ve got zucchini sprouts coming up and this time, I will try the stuffed squash blossoms!
I remember being very, very young and eating flowers with a bunch of other kids at the park. I have no idea what they were, but that’s a memory I haven’t thought about in years!
I have had dandelion wine. It was delicious. I also have a friend who always puts flower petals on her special cakes. I have also had nasturtium petals in a salad, adds a nice little bite.
I would love to have the book on how to use more flowers in more things.
I found a recipe for rose petal ice cream, and tried it. As I cooked the ice cream base it actually smelled delicious! The ice cream didn’t end up setting properly…. I haven’t thought about it in years. I’ll have to give it another try!
One of my favorite herb books, Living with Herbs by Jo Ann Gardener, 1997 has a recipe for Wilted Dandelion Salad that’s the best spring tonic.
I made a cupcake recipe recently that called for dried rose petals, which I had in my pantry from last summer. I picked them from the wild roses growing near my house and dehydrated them not knowing exactly what I would do with them, but they sure made my house smell heavenly in the process!
I’m a lavender junkie. My friends would say the best thing I ever baked was a peach lavender galette. It was my first time cooking with a flower and it was delicious.
I recently infused vinegar with nasturtiums and it was delicious, orange and spicy.
When I was growing up in Southern California, I would eat some very small orange/red berries that were on my neighbors tall shrub with tiny leaves. I do not know the name of this bush/berry but many people told me they were poisionous when I grew up.The flowers on the groundcover were in clusters and you could pick 10 at a time and if you sucked the bottom of them, you would get quite a bit of a sweet nectar similar to honey. Don’t know what those were either.
When I was young, in Romania, my mom used to make rose petal jam. It was a certain rose that grew near our yard, she would cut the petals and rub them with lemon before cooking with sugar. It had a chewy crunchy texture. I would eat it by the spoonful.
I ‘ve had rose petal jam, I hope that counts! It’s wonderful. I would like to learn how to use beautiful flowers in cooking!
Thank you!
When I was a kid the neighbor had a nice honeysuckle bush we used to eat the juice from it but not the whole flower
I have no idea what kind of flowers they were, but there were these hedges my mother had grown along our garage/port and I used to like plucking some of the flowers and pulling the ends out, which would have a little droplet of nectar on the end. When I was a kid I thought it was honey left there by bees 😛
Lavender in a chicken pate. Delicious.
Also, while it’s not quite eating, jasmine tea is always my favorite
Nasturtium blooms on salads is something I’ve enjoyed. I especially like stuffed squash blossoms though that seems closer to eating a food item.
Our local Indian restaurant put flowers on certain dishes and I always love to savour them.
My only real exposure to edible flowers is in lavender honey lemonade. I’d love to try out that dandelion jam though! My campus is covered in dandelions right now.
To be honest I have never, that I remember anyway, eaten a flower. Ironic, since I happen to be a firm believer and advocate of the power of plant and flower healing. I guess now is a good time to start. 😉
oh my WORD – I wonder what dandelion jam tastes like??!
I’ve batter-dipped dandelion flowers and fried them. They tasted like fried food – great!
Years ago, I made an oatmeal spice cake for my mom for Mother’s Day and my sister and I decorated it with purple violet flowers, probably the loveliest cake I’ve ever eaten. This book sounds fascinating; it would have never occurred to me that you could make dandelion jam.
I’ve eaten many flowers over the years, but my epiphany was Red Bud Jam. Yummy!!
I think the only flower I’ve eaten in lavender. I like it in cookies!
I like using nasturtiums in salads 🙂 I discovered Roslind Creasy’s Edible Flowers book several years ago & was hooked!
as a child i sucked the nectar from honeysuckles. my brother told me that the flower that proved that you liked butter if held under the chin (dandylions?)also tasted that way. we were poor and didn’t get butter often, so i ate one. wasn’t true, and i couldn’t wait to pull that one on my younger brother (pecking order lol). but! since i have been an adult i’ve eaten many a bloom on rice, salads, etc.
Love using flowers in food! Blooms from herbs in salads, decorative flowers on baked goods, lavender and hibiscus in the myriad ways they are able to be used. But I also love eating pineapple sage blossoms right off the plant!
Clover. Everybody in my parents’ neighborhood who had kids and therefore didn’t waste time/money putting herbicides/fertilizer on their abused yards had white and red clover in their lawns, and we’d pull the little tube-petals off and suck on the bases – it was quite sweet. We (the girls, anyway) also made clover-chain garlands of them. Ah, summer.
I like adding the purple flowers from chives on my spring salads. They taste like onions. 🙂
I honestly haven’t ate many flowers themselves but sucked the nectar out of those sweet smelling honeysuckles as a child. They were every where as I walked my way to school!
I just had some dandelion sorbet with spring flowers at Salt and Straw in Portland.
When I was little, like 5 or 6 yrs old, a friend dared me to eat a dandelion….needless to say I tried it and didn’t like it… 🙁 Now we use dandelion greens in our salads. Count me in for the giveaway.
I have made dandelion jelly, dandelion wine and even lilac flower wine. Dandelion jelly does indeed taste like honey. However, be sure to use only the yellow petals from the blossom when making the jelly since anything green will give the finished jelly (or wine) a bitter taste.
I can’t say I eat flowers that often, but I did get a book when my boys were young, about the bounty of the desert. In one of the recipes was an omelet made with yucca flowers. They are so sweet.
Starting with 8 cups of water and only using 3 cups of the tea seems like a lot gets wasted. I was only able to harvest one cup of blossoms. Wondering if I can make tea using the one cup and 2 c. of water then just make a quarter recipe?
I couldn’t resist! With a yard full of dandelions I had to give it a go… today!! I used 3c of sugar instead of the 5.5c called for (still plenty sweet and a good set-up – not uber-firm the way some jellies can get, but nicely spreadable) and it made 5 x 1/2 pints of the most lovely golden jelly! The smell is reminiscent of honey (no idea how that works) but the flavour is delicately lemony and that special *something* that must be coming from the dandelions. I can’t wait til tomorrow morning to have some on an english muffin!
Thanks so much for this recipe!!
Nasturtiums stuffed with goat cheese! So so lovely.
I think I started with nasturtium blooms in salads, but have since candied violets (a true labor of love) and made pear lavendar jam. That’s your recipe, isn’t it?
I’m not sure i’ve ever eaten a flower before? But ive jsut added dandylion jelly to my to do list…
i ate sooooo many honey suckles at my elementary school bus stop. that was my favorite thing to get yelled at for.
As a kid my mom always put dandelions in our salads, now as an adult I eat squash flowers stuffed with cheese and chive blossoms. Delicious!
I love canning pears, and my favorite syrup is a vanilla/hibiscus syrup. The combination of the pears and the deep red syrup is delicious.
I had violets on a lemon curd cake – lovely!
Last year my sister-in-law and I hunted down a bunch of violets and candied them! We also picked tons of dandelions and made fritters. If I won this book I’d hand it right over to her. She taught me how to cook with flowers and she’d love this!
A while ago, I found another book called “Cooking With Flowers” (from 1971) at a garage sale and decided to have an edible flower dinner party! Nasturtium leaves spread with a blend of red bell peppers and cream cheese was really good! (and forage-able from the neighborhood….)