Hello everyone,

I hope you have all had some beautiful spring weather like we have here in Scotland. Hard frosts followed by warm sunny days, my favourite kind of spring weather. I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about this week and then I went into the garden to pick a posy of flowers and inspiration hit.

It feels like proper Spring (if not early summer) weather has arrived here. With all of the sun and warmth a new flower is coming into bloom everyday. A narcissus here, a tulip there, snakes head fritillaries popping, just an extra piece of colour to add to what will hopefully be a beautiful tapestry of colour filling the garden for the rest of the year. The variety of flowers that are coming means the posies we are bringing into the house are much more varied now, not that there is anything wrong with a vase full of the same variety of daffodil or tulip.

I am not a florist but I love playing with colour, shape and form to make interesting botanical posies. A love which my daughter shares too. We would happily spend a morning filling jars, vases and bottles full of flowers, just playing with what we have and enjoying every second. I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to make a homemade posy, if it brings you joy then it is perfect. A jar of daffodils, hellebores, cherry blossom and pulmonaria can bring me the same amount of joy as a jar of dandelion flowers.

The selection of flowers in bloom also means that the mud kitchen ‘meals’ the children make are incredibly beautiful. I have to stop myself from asking them not to use the flowers as they are just doing the same thing as I am, just in their own way. The children learning to love, appreciate and find moments of happiness resulting from the different colours, shapes and scents of flowers is more important than having too many of the blooms cut down for their play.

One day the dream would be to start a flower farm. Actually, the dream dream would be to start a flower farm with my sister but living 150 miles apart makes that difficult. In the mean time I’m hoping to start selling some from our not-quite-ready honesty shop. Small steps to see if I can do this. I would love to go all out and just go for it but fear of failure is stopping me. Is it a mix of social anxiety, having to “put myself out there” to make it work, imposter syndrome or just feeling like I don’t know enough. The dream is there and I will work towards it, one day at a time.

Recipes

For this weeks recipes I thought I would follow on with the flower theme and share two of my favourite dandelion recipes.

Dandelion Wreath Biscuits

Ingredients

• 225g plain flour

• 150g vegan butter

• 75g caster sugar

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• Petals from three dandelions

• Icing sugar

• Lemon juice

• Green icing

• More dandelion petals

Method

1. Mix all the biscuit ingredients together in a freestanding mixer.

2. Roll out to 3mm thick then using a larger and smaller cookie cutter make the wreath shape by cutting out the large shape then using the smaller cutter in the middle.

3. Bake in the oven at 180C for 8 minutes.

4. Once cool mix 1/4 cup icing sugar with a few drops of lemon juice.

5. Place the biscuit in the icing and let any excess drip off. Add lots of small green dots using green icing, then using a cocktail stick carefully go through all the dots in a circle. Top with dandelion petals.

Vegan Dandelion Madeleines

Ingredients

• 65g spelt flour

• 10g cornflour

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 50g vegan butter, melted

• 50g caster sugar

• 45g non dairy yoghurt (I used coconutcollab)

• 25ml oat milk

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• Zest of 1 lemon

• 1/4 cup dandelion petals

• 100g white vegan chocolate

• Dandelion petals

Method

1. Mix the flour, cornflour, baking powder together.

2. In a separate bowl mix the melted butter, sugar, yoghurt, oat milk, vanilla extract and lemon zest.

3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix gently until there is no lumps. Carefully fold in the dandelion petals.

4. Place in the fridge and refrigerate for at least two hours. Grease your madeleine tin with melted butter and place in the fridge too.

5. Once they have been in the fridge add about a heaped tsp of the mixture into each madeleine mould. Place back into the fridge while you preheat the oven to 220C.

6. Place the madeleines into the oven for five minutes at 220C, then reduce to 160C and cook for another 3-4 minutes.

7. Once cooked leave to cool before decorating.

8. Melt the white chocolate then dip each madeleine into the white chocolate and scatter a few dandelion petals on top.

9. Let the chocolate set before eating, if you can!

I hope you have enjoyed this weeks newsletter and thank you for reading this far. I’ll see you next week, H xx

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