{"id":2852,"date":"2011-05-22T12:41:21","date_gmt":"2011-05-22T17:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/?p=2852"},"modified":"2011-05-22T12:41:21","modified_gmt":"2011-05-22T17:41:21","slug":"flower-blossom-jelly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/2011\/05\/flower-blossom-jelly\/","title":{"rendered":"Flower Blossom Jelly"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Naturalist at Pfeiffer Nature Center<\/a> gave me a terrific idea, one that I decided to use to get a major head start on Christmas presents. Yes, I fully realize that it’s only May, but you have to do things as the Muse inspires and the season allows.<\/p>\n

So on Thursday evening I walked around my yard and nipped the biggest yellow heads I could find from all the dandelions in my yard. I came into the house and twisted the blossoms from the stem end, then made dandelion blossom tea. After going to the grocery store on Saturday morning for some needed supplies, I made 2 batches of dandelion blossom jelly. You can get the recipe<\/a> at the Nature Center’s blog.
\n\"dandelion<\/a><\/p>\n

I must say, it is quite a delicate flavor that is very reminiscent of honey.<\/p>\n

Once I decided to make the dandelion jelly, I wanted to make another flower jelly, too. So while I was walking around my yard mowing the lawn Thursday afternoon, I was tasting the various blossoms. I decided my pink-flowering crabapple would be great. <\/p>\n

Friday evening I picked lots of crabapple blossoms & made the tea. I made two batches of this jelly Saturday morning as well. Here’s the recipe<\/a> I used for this one.
\n\"crabapple<\/a><\/p>\n

My taste buds prefer the slightly tangy crabapple jelly. <\/p>\n

These two recipes jelled differently. The crabapple is a more typical jelly consistency; the dandelion is softer. I can’t say if it’s because the crabapple recipe used less flower tea, because the dandelion recipe had you add the pectin up front (not standard jelly-making procedure), because one used liquid pectin and one powered, or perhaps crabapple flowers contain some of the natural pectin that’s in the fruits themselves. I will say that for both recipes I used some more tea than the recipe called for and of boiled it liquid down some, as I feared I’d make my tea too weak; that I’d poured too much boiling water over the flowers.<\/p>\n

When I was all done, I had 40 jars of beautiful homemade jelly sitting on my counter, dazzling in the afternoon sun.
\n\"both<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, you’ll want to make sure that you’re using edible flower blossoms. Most are, but some are not. If you’re not sure, do some research. Here’s a place that has some info about both edible<\/a> and toxic plants<\/a>; there are many other sites you could go to. Always err on the side of caution when you’re using plants you’re not familiar with<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Your turn: what’s shining in your kitchen, or brightening your yard?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Naturalist at Pfeiffer Nature Center gave me a terrific idea, one that I decided to use to get a major head start on Christmas presents. Yes, I fully realize that it’s only May, but you have to do things as the Muse inspires and the season allows.<\/p>\n

So on Thursday evening I walked around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-as-i-see-it","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2852"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2858,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852\/revisions\/2858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}