“In this world, it’s kill or BE killed.” - Flowey, UNDERTALE

Inspiration

Your best friend Flowey called, and he’d like your SOUL if you don’t mind. Without getting too deep in the weeds, Flowey is a sentient flower monster from the game UNDERTALE. He’s basically the main antagonist of the game, a malevolent being ever lurking. But he’s a flower after all! So how does one drink a flower?

For me, I had the chance to play around with the flavors of dandelion, the most accessible yellow flower I have access to in Philadelphia. I played with the dandelion in its various forms (much like Alphys did with golden flowers to create… well spoilers…). As I mixed around, I found that my infused dandelion spirit paired well with lemon and in particular pisco brandy. To top it off, I struggled to garnish the perfect stemmed cordial glass.

Workshopping

Dandelion Liquor

Flowey’s a golden flower, and my favorite yellow-hued petalbud is a dandelion. Dandelions can be cooked, steeped, and even eaten raw under the right conditions. I’d love to give you a rundown on all of these cases, but the amount of edible dandelion in the streets of Philadelphia is rather slim. Might I make a suggestion not to try and ingest dandelions that are even remotely close to a street. Runoff can get into the soil and give ya a nasty bug if you ingest it. If you’re lucky enough to find good dandelion, the stuff that grows real tall and has beautiful green serrated leaves, then play around a bit!

I was determined to make my own dandelion spirit, so I started by grabbing bags of dandelion leaf & root tea. I did try a bit with the local dandelion buds (the ones that weren’t crushed or bruised) but after one sip, there was this offputting bitterness that didn’t seem natural. I trashed that batch and continued with the pre-bagged stuff. I’ll step you through how I workshopped the spirit, and then give you a final recipe if you’d like to re-create it yourself.

Two bags of dandelion leaf & root tea (3.5g ~ I believe they were Traditional Medicinals brand) were added to 600 ml of Vodka and left to sit for about three days. You likely don’t need more than 24 hours, but I forgot about the batch. After this time, the vodka had turned a urine-like dark yellow color. In terms of taste, I got notes of bitter cucumber rind and a hint of a squash-like vegetal-ness.

Following the dandelion infusion, I wanted to impart additional flavors to bring out more of what I was already tasting. When I thought of earthiness, I thought of mushrooms, so I sought out some bits of Chaga to amplify that flavor of, well, dirt. I sourced my Chaga from the Herbiary in Reading Terminal Market. After steeping 4.5 g of Chaga in the spirit for about 2.5 hours, that earthiness that I noticed upfront has shifted to being more of an end palette flavor that sticks around pleasantly. The bitterness increased slightly but was surprisingly rounded out a bit. It now seemed more natural with the other flavors as opposed to being distinct.
I had a bit of fun transforming the earthy flavors and wanted to adjust it a bit more by adding a slight kick. Adjusting with a spicy pepper I felt would evolve the flavors to be a bit too leafy, so I kept with something spicy from the earth, ginger. I’m a fan of ginger for its medicinal uses so I’m used to it on my palette. I added 16.3 grams of rough-cut ginger (not skinned) and let it sit in the solution for 15 minutes. This was just enough time to add a noticeable ginger brightness, without the overwhelming spiciness.

The final botanical added was lemongrass. A bit of research showed that lemongrass and dandelion complement each other well, and I wanted to transform the non-earthy flavors present in the spirit. I added 29.6 grams of cut lemongrass (or about 2 stalks) and tasted every 5 minutes until the 30-minute mark. The spirit now smelled sweeter than it did previously and had shifted to be almost corn-like in flavor. After everything was mixed, I cut the mixture in half with filtered water, bringing the ABV down to about 20%. In retrospect, I likely didn’t need to cut it, but I worked with what I got!

In summary, our dandelion spirit had an earthy bitterness with subtle notes of squash and corn. The final recipe for this batch wound up being:

• 600 ml of Vodka (about 40% ABV)

• 2 packets of Dandelion Leaf & Root Tea (3.5 g) for at least 24 hours

• 4.5 g of Chaga mushroom (dried) for 150 minutes

• 16.3 grams of Ginger (skin on) for 15 minutes

• 29.6 g of Lemongrass for 30 minutes

• Cut in half with filtered water

Flavor Pairing

Now that we’ve got a dandelion spirit base, it needed a cocktail to fit within. I had added lemongrass to the dandelion spirit, so I took a leap pairing it with a bit of limoncello. What a combo! The lemon oil sweetness of the limoncello paired super well with the slight gingery kick and earthiness of the dandelion spirit. I thought too that perhaps one flower type would go with another, so I tested with some leftover chamomile pisco that I had infused for the Clock Out cocktail inspired by Paper Mario. Pisco and dandelion weren’t too bad! The chamomile flavor overpowered the rather subtle dandelion notes though. Testing with an un-infused Pisco remedied that upstaging. A little bit of limoncello, some pisco to pair with dandelion, and Flowey’s form was coming together. Now I needed a garnish.

Petals and Stem

In my travels, I came across this perfect stemmed cordial glass that is pictured above. When I saw this glass, I immediately thought that it looked like a flower. The tall stem and shallow, bowled cup at the top was what got me.

To garnish this drink was my best nightmare. On paper it felt simple, just cut 6 oval slices of lemon peel, and adhere them to the glass like flower petals. I wish I could give you a simple explanation of how to put this together on your own, but I simply can’t. I will tell you that it took about an hour and a half of resizing, repositioning, and re-adhering to get this to work. I discovered during this photoshoot that with just the right amount of toothpicking and supergluing a proper Flowey can be formed. I also learned that you can superglue fruit peels into a glass. You can also clean said glass carefully with soap and warm water, and make it fresh like new again with the rough edge of a sponge. Anyway, the pictures came out great!

For Flowey’s face on the outside of the glass, I chose his classic smile which fit so well with the lighting setup. Check out this sheet of Flowey faces to adorn your own glassware with!

Flavor Analysis

An undeniable dryness and flavor of earth leads to lemon. The woodsy flavor is reminiscent of dandelion tea. This cocktail is fruity in the sense that it is fruit-forward, not in the way that fruit is sweet.