Dandelion Jelly

So I have some A.MAZING friends that do some A.MAZING things that I sit & dream about!  One of those A.MAZING friends started out as a childcare mom & has turned into someone I know I can trust for/with anything.  Sporatically, I get to care for her children.  The older of the 2 is homeschooling so usually its like having a helper on days she's here.  AWESOME.  This week when she came she had 70some dandelions picked already & added 20 some more from my yard & we started discussing making jelly w/them.  Determined not to let her down I searched on swagbucks.com for 'homemade dandelion jelly', low & behold whose site pops up? one of the above mentioned A.MAZING friends!  SAWEEET, a recipe I can rely on!

so she set to work after all the others were settled for quiet time, snipping & snipping the flower petals off all of the dandelions, making 2 cups worth.  I then poured boiling water over the top & let that steep for 2 hours (which was KILLING HER to watch it sit there doing 'nothing'.  :)  then I realized I didn't have the liquid pectin it called for, so said A.MAZING friend linked me to a page that subbed the powder for the liquid & told me the measurements.  We proceeded in stirring, boiling, heating jars, pouring into jars & letting set to pop.  Here she is the next day w/one of our little jars.

& here she is showing that it didn't gel.  yup, that's right, instead of Jelly, we have dandelion SYRUP.  ice cream topping, toast & oatmeal topping, sun tea flavoring.  it tastes remarkably like honey so I think I will also try it in some recipes as the sweetener!

Lesson learned, should have used the whole packet of pectin insteadof 3/4.  Live & learn! it was a fun project & I loved that we took a WEED & made it into something useful!!