Here’s a freshly foraged forsythia dandelion jelly recipe with real vanilla and honey – no sugar! This is a canning recipe for the early spring from edible flowers. It tastes like sunshine!
Forsythia in the Garden
I love forsythia for so many reasons, not the least of which is that it’s one of the first heralds of spring where I live. First come the Lenten roses, then the early daffodils, and then the forsythia. Like a parade of hope after a long winter.
I’m not too detail oriented in my garden, especially with my perennial flowers. If you can’t thrive on benign neglect as a perennial in my yard, you ain’t gonna hack it at all. Forsythia is perfect for me because she grows. She just grows and grows and is pure delight.
Forsythia, when left unpruned, will from a huge bush with cascading branches that arch in great waterfalls of golden blooms in the spring. And there are so many blooms on each branch! And yes, each one is an edible flower.
Frequently Asked Questions about Edible Flowers like Dandelions & Forsythia
If you’ve never used flowers as food, you might have questions about them. Here are a few answers that might help you feel comfortable using edible flowers.
More Flower Food Recipes
Is Dandelion Jelly Good for You?
All jelly has sugar and sugar is decidedly not healthy! However, there are healthier forms of sugar like honey and coconut sugar which have far fewer carbs than table sugar. They also have vitamins and minerals and other more healthful properties.
Dandelion itself is very good for you and I invite you to read the linked article below on its benefits for more details. In general, dandelion is considered beneficial for liver and kidney health.
The greens and blooms are both edible and the greens are a traditional salad ingredient, easy to forage and find in early spring. The youngest leaves are the sweetest and most mild.
To dress your salad, you can make infused dandelion vinegar. In fact, you can learn to make any number of herbal vinegars! If you would like a free, printable tutorial on making herbal vinegars, simply join our newsletter family below!
How Do you Pick Dandelions for Jelly?
To pick dandelions for use in this jelly recipe find several big patches of them. Be sure the dandelions are away from the road so that they’re not contaminated by exhaust or other contaminants.
You only need to bloom to make the dandelion tea for this recipe. You can simply snip them with your fingers or use scissors to harvest them.
To learn more, please read:
- The Benefits of Dandelion by Learning Herbs
- Dandelion Medicinal Uses by Practical Self-Reliance
How Do You Make Dandelion Blossom Tea?
You’ll need to make a simple dandelion tea for this forsythia dandelion jelly recipe. To make dandelion blossom tea:
- Gather about three cups of dandelion blooms.
- Snip the green ends off and compost them.
- Place the blooms into heat-safe bowl and cover with at least 4 cups of boiling water. Let it sit for at least 4-6 hours. The longer you leave it, the darker and stronger the tea will get.
- Strain and compost the used dandelion.
What is Dandelion Jelly Made Of?
Dandelion jelly is made of:
- dandelion blossom tea
- honey
- lemon juice, fresh or bottled
- vanilla bean
- pectin
You can also make it without pectin, you’ll just need to cook it longer. If you don’t want to purchase commercial pectin, you can learn to make your own pectin from apples.
Are All Forsythia Edible?
Forsythia blossoms are edible, yes. For more ideas on which flowers can be eaten, please visit our post Edible Flowers & Their Uses.
You may also be interested in our e-book, Herbal Flower Recipes!
What Does Forsythia Tea Taste Like?
Forsythia blooms taste like sunshine, as do dandelion blossoms. I think most yellow flowers taste like sunshine and I don’t know if its because of the pollen or simply part of being yellow.
What Can you Do with Forsythia?
Nerdy Farm Wife has a great article with multiple things to do with forsythia blooms.
For more of Nerdy Farm Wife’s genius with natural materials, I suggest you get her natural soap making course. I own all her books and highly recommend them!
Forsythia Dandelion Jelly Recipe
Here’s an edible flowers recipe for early spring that you can easily forage. This forsythia dandelion jelly recipe can be altered a bit if you need to add another early spring bloom like redbuds. However, forsythia and dandelion make this delightful bright yellow jelly!
FORSYTHIA DANDELION JELLY
Ingredients
- 9 cups Blossoms Becomes 3 cups of tea
- 3 cups Quality Honey
- 2 Tbsp. Lemon Juice
- 1 Vanilla Bean Cut open & scraped
- 1 box Pectin or Pomona's Pectin (see box)
Instructions
- Pick about 8-10 cups of fresh blooms. This isn't an exact science but go for 1-part dandelions to 2-parts forsythia blooms. You can just make this with forsythia blooms, but I like the pollen and color boost the dandelions give the jelly.
- I don't bother to take the bottoms off the forsythia as they just taste "plant-y" but I do remove the green bottoms of the dandelions since they're bitter. Cut off the green part with kitchen scissors and keep the petals, pollen, and fluff.
- Pour enough boiling water over the flowers to cover them, at least 4 cups. The more water you add, the weaker the tea will be and, therefore, the less golden flavor the jelly will have in the end.
- Steep the water and flowers for 4 hours or overnight.
- Strain through cheesecloth to remove the flower parts, leaving a lovely, golden tea.
- Put tea, lemon juice, and the contents of a box of pectin into a large saucepan. Add vanilla seeds—you can also add the vanilla bean for the boiling. If you do that, simply remove the bean before you put the jelly into jars. You can leave the bean in one jar for aesthetics and gift it to someone extra special.
- Bring to a boil and add the honey.
- Bring back to a boil and boil for about 2 minutes. Ladle into hot, prepared jelly jars, leaving 1/4" head-space and assemble the lids.
- Process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes.
Notes
Edible Flowers
In case you’d like some more edible flower foods, please visit the lovely links below.
Edible Flower Articles
Violet Gelatin and Other Flower Foods
Edible Flowers: Things my Grandmas Taught me
Lilac Flower Jelly - A delightful floral taste
Corn Cob Jelly – Low Sugar
Not a flower, however corn cobs makes a lovely jelly!
Kudzu Jelly
Substituting Honey for Sugar is a healthy and delicious alternative!
I have several bushes of forsythia so sacrificing a few blossoms here and there to make this forsythia and dandelion jelly recipe is no sacrifice at all. I certainly have enough dandelion blossoms to spare.
You know you’re a true foraging weird-o when you can’t wait for the dandelions to start blooming- we just love those edible flowers!
Foraging with the Family
My family and I have been trying to improve our understanding of and experience with foraging plants for food and medicine. I’m constantly perusing my yard and the yards of total strangers looking for nettle and purslane. We go up into the mountains and covetously seek out the pennyroyal and the elderberry.
Always being responsible about how much we take and leave behind, this new skill has stood us in good stead. We’ve used some wild-crafted yarrow several times to stop bleeding while hiking.
We’ve also learned that we love to eat lambs quarter even more than spinach! Lately, we’ve started to branch out our wonderings and wanderings into the world of edible flowers.
–>>Pin This Recipe for Later<<–
To learn more about foraging, please see the Foraging section in the Green the Homestead chapter of our book, The Do It Yourself Homestead. Don’t have your own copy? No worries! We wrote on just for you and you can find that by clicking here. For a free sample of the foraging section, simply email me at Tessa@homesteadlady.com and I’ll get you set up.
In the UK people do not ‘can’ (or ‘bottle’ – the English word for canning) jams and jellies. They keep very well in a cool dark place. Occasionally a mould forms on the top, but you can scoop it off and use the jam underneath. I have used jams and jellies two or three years old that have ‘hidden’ at the back of my pantry, to no ill effect!! If they have started shrinking from the sides of the jar, I would discard them, otherwise they are fine.
Thanks for sharing that, Vanessa! What would “shrinking from the sides of the jar” indicate? Just that they’re desiccating with age?
I have a friend from Kenya that has similar stories of keeping food. But the hottest it ever gets there is 85 degrees Fahrenheit – which is a far cry from the 100+ degree weather we have. So I do think that climate might have something to do with the difference. Although I think there is so much sugar in most jams and jellies that they could be preserved for quite a while without canning (or bottling).
Yes, pioneer times they were simply put up and sealed with wax! I think about Krystyna of Spring Mountain Living who lives without a fridge; you just develop a different way of preparing and consuming your food.
Where can I find info on Krystyna of Spring Mountian Living? Thanks
They’re rebranding their name – they’re now UP Pastured Farms and you can find them on Facebook and their blog. Great lady and an inspiring homesteader!
We’ve made rosepetal jam, but not lavender or anything else. This is such an inspiring post. It’s now marked for next spring. All we could make now would be autumn leaf jam, and somehow I don;t think it would be too popular!
We also don’t bother with a water bath for jams. I have some very old rosepetal jam that’s still good. We just store it at the back of a cupboard (it’s dark once you close the door!) and leave it. We’ve never lost a batch, even though our summers often get to above 100F (38C).
Oooh, rose petal – what a great idea! We did rose petal ice cream last year with our rugosa roses and that was divine; it was like fairy ice cream. I’ll have to try rose petal this year!
It is not safe to turn the jars upside down. All jellies need to be water bathed for at least 10 minutes. Also I have made many different types of flower jellies. They need to be used within one year, FLower syrups need to be used within 6 months.
Thank you for the reminder that the USDA rules of canning do require jams and jellies to be processed in a water bath canner to ensure safety. I do admit to cheating when I’m in a hurry with jams and jellies. I’ve never made flower syrups – sounds like some yummy pancakes.
Apple blossom jelly is really good too. I’ve also tried Lilac jelly. It’s also good but it sort of tastes like the flower smells if that makes any sense. Rose blossom jelly is very good too
Ha, that makes total sense! I haven’t tried apple blossom – what does it taste like? Rose is divine! We make rugosa rose water sometimes to make ice cream for little girls tea parties – it tastes like its made from fairies.
I can’t wait to try this recipe on some of the Forsythia flowers in my garden! I included a link to your recipe in my recent blog post on how to make a Forsythia layer cake! Hope that’s okay! 🙂
Thanks for stopping by, Hannah!
So glad you found the recipe useful; let me know if you like it. Thank you for linking! Feel free to share your post here – a forsythia layer cake sounds simply divine.
When I click a print button for a recipe page i really only want the recipe, not 14 pages of ads and comments. Please provide an option like that, we do not like to waste paper or ink.
I understand your frustration, Tami, especially as a reader of recipe blogs myself. I’ll be completely honest with you, I’ve tried several recipes plugins now and they have been nightmares! I’m still cleaning up the mess from the last one that erased, yes ERASED, over a hundred recipes on my blog. I’m painstakingly having to recreate each one and the experience has left me never wanting to use another plugin (the thing that creates the link you’re talking about) again. I’m sorry if that creates a frustrating experience for you but I have five homeschooled kids, a home and homestead to run, not to mention my writing – I just don’t have time to mess with recipe plugins! 😉
The option that is best for you to use, if you don’t want all the other stuff on the blog page, is to highlight the recipe information you want and right click to save and transfer to a blank document. The cool thing about that is that you can fiddle with the font size, bolding and anything else you’d like before you print it. As I re-write all these lost recipes I’m keeping the recipe formatting simple so that it will save and print for readers easily. You can find the recipes on any recipe blog post by the title of the recipe, usually somewhere down the middle of the post. I’m careful to keep ingredients and directions organized, using bullet points and numbered steps.
I hope that’s helpful for you! So, did you make the jelly? How did it turn out? I wanted to make some violet jelly this year but missed the violet harvest while we were moving. Sigh.
I’m sure I’m just overlooking it but I can’t find d the actual recipe to save my life! ?
You’re not overlooking it, Robbin! A recent site issue erased over half of the recipes on my blog, sadly. I’m slowly rewriting them but have yet to get to this one. I’ll work on it tonight and alert you here in the comments when it’s finished. If you don’t mind, I can email you when the recipe is updated/restored, too.
I’m sorry for the inconvenience! Believe me, I feel that pain!
Hi,
This idea sounds awesome but I don’t know if it’s me but I can’t see the actual recipe anywhere… is there supposed to be a link to it?
Thanks for your shares!
Thank you for alerting me, Caroline! We lost every single one of our recipes on the site last year and have slowly been rebuilding them. I’ve fixed this one since you were clever enough to spot it.
Eat hearty!
Does this have any medicinal properties or uses? If so, please tell me what they are. I am adding your recipe to my slideshow on medicinal plants and how to use them (sounds a bit like a Harry Potter movie or schoolbook doesn’t it?). A main part is saying what the positive effects can be (other than a good tasting honey to add to toast or pancakes). Please tell me if you know.
Sounds like a slideshow I’d love to see!
Here’s a great article from Herbal Academy on dandelion: https://theherbalacademy.com/a-family-herb-dandelion/
I don’t know of any medicinal uses of forsythia – the blooms just make the jelly a lovelier shade of yellow.
Hope that helps!
Just so you know, when you make Dandelion Jelly with sugar, it tastes like honey. And you use boiling water to can it so it will last for at least a year. So if you dont want to use your honey up, it will still taste great!
Thanks for the tip! I just prefer honey for this one but dandelions nicely flavor everything with a mild honey scent.
Beautiful sounding recipe…I fully intend on making this when spring rolls around. I make a great tasting Peach and Lavender Jelly, using fresh peaches and Lavender Blossom Tea as well as lavender petals. So yummy it never lasts long in our home!!!!
Yvonne
Peach lavender jelly?! Oh, that does sound delicious! I hope you enjoy this recipe – let me know how it goes, if you get a chance.
Have a lovely holiday season!