What ELSE can you do with a dandelion? Dandelion Fritters.

Yep! Dandelion fritters. I can't take credit for this idea or the recipe. I saw it first and followed the recipe from the Learning Herbs website. They have all kinds of cool information on herbalism and natural medicine, and I enjoy browsing the site every now and then. I followed the recipe they have there with slight tweaks of adding a bit of salt to the batter, and using a half all purpose and half whole wheat combo for the flour. (They don't specify any kind of flour, so I'm thinking it's cooks choice in this matter.) I didn't count, but I made quite a few fritters and still had a bit of batter left after I used up all my dandelions. This little bit of batter went a pretty long way; I'm guessing I made somewhere around 30.
Here's the recipe:
Dandelion Fritters
1 egg
1 cup milk
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
a basket full of freshly picked wide open dandelion blossoms
cooking oil

In a medium skillet heat an inch or so of oil. Mix up the batter well and dip dandelions petal-down, holding the green part, swirl it a bit to get it covered in batter and place in heated oil. Once in starts browning, flip it over and let the underside get cooked. Transfer to paper-towels to drain. You can cook several at once, just make sure you keep an eye on the ones that went in first to prevent burning.

I served a few dandelion fritters along side my dandelion leaf pesto (I thought they were kind of cute, like meatball-replacers) but the rest of them we ate with a honey-mustard dipping sauce, which I think suited them better. They were really quite tasty: tender with a slight sweetness that was set off by the bitter stem/sepal part. John and I ate all the ones I made and were quite satisfied at the end. I had been a little worried that the meal wasn't going to be substantial enough but we both came away pretty full.

This would make a great afternoon snack, and didn't require any more effort than your average fried style recipe, excepting the the gathering part...Which was actually very fun. I bet kids would get a kick out of this!