The flower you see at the bottom of this post has begun blooming here in Michigan...a common sight on road shoulders, empty lots and other poor-soil areas. If you hate 'em you call 'em knapweed. If you love 'em you call 'em star thistle. But if you love honey, you will love star thistle honey most of all; it's a mild honey, but it has a very distinctive flavor...like drinking flowers.
Sleeping Bear Farms, up in Benzie County, Michigan, sells star thistle honey, and a host of other honey products. Their dill honey mustard is dee-lish, especially as a pretzel dip. Check out the above link for more products. (And check out my list-o-links for Beedazzled, a sister operation that makes soaps and other toiletries, candles and other items using beeswax, honey and other bee products. Beedazzled's retail outlet in Benzonia is great fun, and you can wander through their herb garden as well. They also always have a booth at the Wheatland Music Festival, whose website you can link to from the list to your left.)
So the next time you see those straggly gray plants with the lavender flowers along the side of the road, or in an empty lot -- there's more to them than meets the eye. And should you invest in a jar of star thistle honey, here's a great cookie recipe that my mother clipped from a 1965 calendar. It was billed as a Christmas cookie, and decorated with colored coconut, but I like them plain.
Honey Drops
350 oven 10-14 minutes ~5 dozen cookies
3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg, separated
1 tsp. grated orange rind
1/4 cup honey
2 1/4 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. mace
1/2 tsp. salt
baking spray
shredded coconut (optional)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat egg white just until foamy; reserve. Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy; beat in egg yolk and orange rind. Blend in honey. Sift together flour, baking powder, mace and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture. Drop by teaspoons onto prepared baking sheet, about 2 inches apart. Flatten cookies with a fork dipped in flour. Brush tops of cookies with egg white; if desired, sprinkle with coconut. Bake 10-14 minutes. Remove to wire rack and cool.
Knapweed, aka star thistle
6 comments:
Yah, I'm not much for coconut, either. They sound delicious, though!
Dash: The secret is the interplay of the mace (an unappreciated spice...try even finding it) and the honey.
I should also mention, these cookies taste better a few days after they've been baked...they mellow.
Simeon: Lots of good stuff in that catalog!
LC - Penzey's spices is your friend!
Charlotte -- I love that website!
Another thing that's awfully hard to find here in the boonies is summer savory, which I like to have on hand for bean recipes and from-scratch stuffing.
The most exotic flavoring agent I've ever seen in a recipe was a vintage cake recipe calling for rosewater or violet extract. The thought of violet extract intrigued me so much that I went on an extended Internet search for same, but never found it. (One spring I attempted violet sugar -- this was during a brief fascination with Victoriana -- but despite following the recipe, and having lots and lots of violets, the flavor/scent was never absorbed by the sugar.)
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