I am totally making this. (Dandelion jelly)
-
You are both so fortunate having fruit bushes, we've never owned a garden that gave enough fruit. I miss collecting from the mature quince tree just outside my old workplace.
If you have a Lidl nearby, on Thursday I found this on their shelves
Pear & cherry liquor jam. From Portugal and £2 a jar. Has lots of bits of fruit yet is fluid to spread.
Absolutely fabulous,
I'm going to another Lidl tomorrow to hunt for more! -
You are both so fortunate having fruit bushes, we've never owned a garden that gave enough fruit. I miss collecting from the mature quince tree just outside my old workplace.
If you have a Lidl nearby, on Thursday I found this on their shelves
Pear & cherry liquor jam. From Portugal and £2 a jar. Has lots of bits of fruit yet is fluid to spread.
Absolutely fabulous,
I'm going to another Lidl tomorrow to hunt for more!@AndyD said in I am totally making this. (Dandelion jelly):
You are both so fortunate having fruit bushes, we've never owned a garden that gave enough fruit.
One mature red currant bush will make a couple of batches of jelly, probably 16 half-pint jars. If you add store bought (like the strawberries and blueberries I used), then of course you get even more.
I have two red gooseberry bushes. Last year was the second year I had them and they yielded 8 half pint jars of jam and 8 half pint jars of chutney.
The black currant bushes have not been nearly as prolific. A handful of berries to snack on. Hoping for better yields this year.
The jostaberry, a black currant/gooseberry cross, gave up about a dozen berries last year. A real disappointment.
Those preserves look nummy. I keep looking for Lidl stores but they're still only on the east coast here in the US, and I'm in the middle.
-
I made violet jam one year. Not worth it, weak as water. My favorite jams to make are strawberry with local fresh picked fruit, and marmalades of any citrusy fruit. I never use as much sugar as called for, preferring sweet and tart. Most store bought is way too sweet for my taste.
Andy, I dyed wool with dandelion blossoms once. Processed it in a white enamel pot. More dye ended up staining the pot than got in the wool! I may have not mordanted correctly. Will try again some time.
-
It's very different from picking and chopping quince for jam. Can be done by one but nice to have help.
- concentrated dandelion pollen gives me mild hayfever/asthma
- it becomes ever more difficult to strip the petals as the heads dry and close; pick the largest heads and pluck their petals on the same day. Pinching & rolling the green partbetween finger and thumb opens & loosens the flower...
- a green lawn at the end of the day will be yellow again next morning
Now I need to buy pectin.
-
A half carrier bag of head/petals makes 11 cups of (quite dark looking) juice. So we multiplied the online recipe by about 3.
2 bags of sugar (10 cups)
6 tablespoons of lemon
A bottle of the only pectin I could find
Roll boiled for about 10 mins, it seems nicely scented
When ladled out it filled 11 standard bottles of jam
Fingers crossed it sets nicely
-
Update on the dandilion jelly.
It had to be gently reheated and lots of pectin added to make it set.
Work out how much pectin you think you might need and use double that, would be my rough estimate.Tastes sweet, a little lemony and as you'd expect, of crushed dandelions.