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Dec
2014
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Floral Food Ideas & Inspiration

Our Favourite Edible Flower Ideas

Edible Flower Inspiration Gallery

The use of edible flowers in food has had a renaissance in recent years but it’s an old practice – the Romans regularly used flowers as a significant ingredient in cooking. Examples we found include an ancient recipes for a fricassee of roses with pastry and the prettily named dish of roses (which won’t be for everyone as the main ingredients are the petals from 30 roses and lambs brain!). Later the Victorians who were crazy about anything floral (see our recent blog on floriography for further proof) embraced the use of flowers in as many dishes as they could. Recipe books from the time include desserts like rose geranium cake and tea sandwiches with nasturtium flowers pressed between thin pieces of buttered bread to form a pretty fringe.

We’re sharing some of our favourite inspirations for using florals in cooking below, from lavender shortbread to rose macarons. If all the sweet treats here don’t exactly make your New Year’s resolution list – we’ll take a small health tick from the fact that many edible flowers are high in vitamins C and A!

Floral Ice Pops

From top left: Canadian Gardening + Epicurious + CookingStoned + My Whole Food Romance

Once you start looking at the possibilities for adding edible flowers you’ll find the options are surprising and inspire all kinds of culinary adventures, from rose petal jam and flower-scented panna cotta and sugars, to candied flowers. Along with the popular edible flowers like nasturtiums, rose, borage, marigolds, violas, courgette and chive flowers – it’s nice to explore the possibilities of lesser-known flowers from herbs such as rosemary and coriander.

Lavender Icecream Inspiration

From top left: Eat Yourself Skinny + Twigg Studios + Twigg Studios + Oui Te Jetaime Aussi
Looking for some lavender party decorations or ribbons to go with this? Shop by purple here.

We love the use of edible flowers and petals in weddings too, from sophisticated floral cakes to flavoured party favours – flowers make the best addition to special occasion cooking, adding a magical note that’s just perfect for a celebration.

If you’re looking for cocktail recipes with a whimsical twist, floral cocktails are surprisingly easy to make with the addition of floral syrups and pretty rose petals. Special mention goes to the Hugo cocktail – just take 150ml ice-cold prosecco and top it up with 20ml of elderflower cordial. Add a splosh (that’s the non-technical term for around 100ml) and add mint leaves and lime juice to taste, for the perfect summer aperitif.

Petal & Flower Recipes

From top left: Adventures In Cooking + Molly Coddles Cakes + Twigg Studios + Coco Cakeland

Some tips:

Before your gastronomic journey starts, here are a couple of tips for using flowers in your cooking:

It’s obviously better safe than sorry about anything that is going on your plate. While beautiful, flowers can be seriously toxic, so it’s a good idea to double-check you have correctly identified the plant is safe to eat. If you’re unsure on any particular flower, we suggest consulting a book or online resource.

Some flowers, while generally safe to eat, can exacerbate allergies so it’s a good idea to introduce edible flowers gradually into your diet.

Many flowers that are technically edible are far from delicious! For instance Marigolds are considered safe in small quantities but only certain species are palatable.

Remove all stamens, anthers and pistils, as they’re not recommended and they’re often the source of bitterness.

Avoiding pollutants and pesticides is a good idea, so avoid flowers if you don’t know how they’ve been treated. Eating packs of flowers sold for culinary use is obviously a safe bet. As is eating flowers you have grown yourself, which will have you thinking about your garden in a whole new light!

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