Recipe and excerpt printed with permission from

Camp Cocktails

Easy, Fun and Delicious Drinks for the Great Outdoors

Text and photography by Emily Vikre © 2020 Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.

From the book:

Is there any flower more friendly than a dandelion? Sure, they are weeds, but their powerful will to take root and grow in any lawn and through any crack in the road feels to me like a testament to the power of optimism. The dandelion was actually brought to North America by European settlers to grow for food, wine, and medicine. The flower, leaves, and root are all edible. And because it is non-native and definitively a weed, you don’t have to worry about overharvesting as you do with native wild plants.

I remember making dandelion-flower fritters in fifth grade. The flavor was fine, but I couldn’t enjoy the thick, feathery texture of the layered flower petals. I much prefer to use dandelion flowers for infusions, in which they give a surprisingly aromatic flavor that reminds me of lemon balm.

Bees Knees Cocktail

Make a Bees Knees by adding 2 ounces (60 ml) gin, ¾ ounce (23 ml) fresh lemon juice, and ¾ ounce (23 ml) Infused Dandelion Honey syrup to an ice-filled shaker.

Shake until chilled, and strain into a coupe glass.

Infused Dandelion Honey

The warm, complex sweetness of wildflower honey is the perfect foil to the bright dandelion flower aroma. And making an infusion is as simple as stirring the two ingredients together. Not only is this honey a delicious cocktail ingredient, but it is also tasty in tea.

¾ cup (255 g) honey

Check the flowers to make sure you remove any little insects or other passengers, then put the flowers in a jar. Cover the flowers with the honey, gently pressing the flowers into the honey to make sure there aren’t any large air bubbles. Seal the jar and allow to steep for 2 weeks. (You can steep it even longer for a more pronounced flavor.) 

If you wish to strain the flowers out of the honey, gently heat the honey to make it more liquid, then strain it through a fine-mesh strainer. Store your honey in a sealed jar at room temperature. Honey keeps forever. (Literally. Several years ago it’s said that archaeologists found jars of honey in a tomb from ancient Egypt and it was still good for eating.) 

To make honey syrup: Combine 2 parts dandelion-infused honey with 1 part water and stir until dissolved.