Lilac jelly
Umgh umgh umhg! Although it’s actually not a finished post yet, I couldn’t withold these pictures from you. While I was cutting some flowers for a new bouquet yesterday I figured out that my lilacs flowers were almost gone. Their season is almost ending here in France. I couldn’t find pieces that were good enough to use for this purpose. Not a huge deal, just the end of a period. I found some other flowers that I could use now.
Then when I went inside the house again, I found out that lilacs aren’t only the best smelling plants in the world, they can be also used in all kinds of foods. I read this in this dutch wild flower eating group. And although there weren’t enough proper (long stems etc) flowers for a vase, there were still enough flowers to use to make some jelly. I couldn’t resist trying out and I quickly cut the remaining flowers from the trees. And the cooking began again. This time in opposite to the dandelion flowers syrup (which tastes amazing), the jelly looks aHmeHzing. No seriously. It does.
I read some people lost the color of the lilacs during the process. For me that really wasn’t a problem, I guess because our lilacs are a bit darker than the usual ones. It is still a bit watery though, so as the last time, I won’t share the recipe just yet. But if it turns out well, I will share it with you. If you can’t wait and you can read dutch just join that above mentioned group. I adjusted my recipe according to the agar agar instructions on my agar agar and *happy sigh* I left some of the flowers in the jelly. Not for taste reasons you can probably understand.
Below you can find some pictures of the process. Enjoy…..
May 18, 2013
Oh … Em … Gee, the photos look absolutely stunning! I just “harvested” some lilacs myself. Hurry up with the recipe!
May 22, 2013
hi again :) I didn’t really like the result of the jelly. So it looked great but eventually the taste didn’t really fit with the texture. I should have made it with sugar and not with agar agar. Sooo… basically you should take the flowers off the greens (around 100gr), place them in a bowl and pour hot water (300gr) over them add a lime sliced to the mix and let it lie for a good night (24h). Then remove lime and flowers and start the regular jelly making process. You can keep some flowers to add later on when it’s all done to the jar. I wouldn’t cook them with the jelly. Hope this helps? I will try something else next year with agar agar (indonesian cake) which will be beautiful with this color and the flowers, but unfortunately I was now late in the season, so all the flowers are officially gone. Good luck! :)
May 24, 2013
It does look very pretty.