Thursday, May 18, 2006
Dandelion Honey,
which should, more properly, be called dandelion syrup, was mentioned to me by one of my Latvian colleagues last summer. Neither Rita nor I had ever heard of it, but a flick around the internet brought up three or four recipes. Unfortunately, by the time I was ready to go, the dandelions were past their best.
This year I was prepared, and yesterday noticed several thousand dandelions on a piece of lawn outside the school, so I took a group of second graders outside at breaktime, picked a few hundred and started separating the petals from the green bits. The petals were boiled, left to soak and then squeezed hard to get all the water out. We added a kilo of sugar and some lemon juice to each litre of liquid and then simmered for several hours. It all sounded so simple in the recipes I read online, but the crossover point from dandelion syrup to burnt sugar toffee seemed to happen much more quickly than expected. We jarred it, but it was too late - the syrup turned solid in the jars and tastes of nothing more than caramelised sugar. The worst of it is that I had promised the children a sampling session, so some part of this weekend is going to have to be spent on repeating the whole experiment without the benefits of child labour.
This year I was prepared, and yesterday noticed several thousand dandelions on a piece of lawn outside the school, so I took a group of second graders outside at breaktime, picked a few hundred and started separating the petals from the green bits. The petals were boiled, left to soak and then squeezed hard to get all the water out. We added a kilo of sugar and some lemon juice to each litre of liquid and then simmered for several hours. It all sounded so simple in the recipes I read online, but the crossover point from dandelion syrup to burnt sugar toffee seemed to happen much more quickly than expected. We jarred it, but it was too late - the syrup turned solid in the jars and tastes of nothing more than caramelised sugar. The worst of it is that I had promised the children a sampling session, so some part of this weekend is going to have to be spent on repeating the whole experiment without the benefits of child labour.
