10 Fragrant edible flower recipes
1st Jan 2015 Recipes
Flowers can do more than bring colour to your back garden: these blooms also make for a delicious addition in the kitchen. Karen Booth-Burns fills us in on nature's most delicious petals.
Using flowers in the kitchen has been around since the ancient Greeks and has featured in Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Indian cuisines, as well as being incorporated in baking, cooking and medicinal potions for centuries in Great Britain. Today, you won’t have to venture far to see a viola on your pudding or some borage flowers in your Pimm’s.
A visual guide to the flowers that feature in these delicious recipes
From salads, cordials and cocktails to jellies and cakes, these recipes aren’t just pretty to look at, but they taste fabulously floral too, and most of the flowers used in the recipes can be found growing in your own back garden.
As well as being very decorative, lots of edible flowers also rich in vitamins, meaning they are more than just a pretty face.
Ten seasonal salad recipes using edible flowers:
Provençal stuffed apricot and goat’s cheese salad
This delightful French-inspired summer salad would make an elegant luncheon dish or an unusual and tasty starter for a dinner party.
The apricots are stuffed with a cream cheese and herb mixture and colourful flowers are scattered over the top for the final flourish.
Rose petal jelly
Image via Luckybeans
This summer recipe is one for the rose growers. Fragrant rose petals are gathered to be used in this beautiful rose pink jelly, which would be fabulous when served on home-made scones or dolloped on top of thick Greek yoghurt as a summer dessert.
Old-fashioned rose lemonade scones
These light, fluffy scones hide a very floral secret; they are made with rose lemonade and are whipped up in under half an hour.
Serve them with fruity home-made jam, split and liberally spread with butter for part of an afternoon tea time treat.
Pimm’s borage jelly
Image via Maddocks Farm Organics
Who doesn’t love a big pitcher of Pimm’s, and with this recipe you can enjoy eating your Pimm’s too.
Pimm’s borage jelly is a wibbly wobbly plate of fruity, boozy deliciousness with the added bonus of pretty blue borage flowers to adorn it.
Lavender biscuits
This recipe comes from a good friend of mine, Miranda Gore-Brown, who was a finalist in The Great British Bake Off and is a bit of a biscuit queen!
Her recipe for these crumbly, buttery and floral biscuits is similar to shortbread and they are very easy to make.
Old fashioned English elderflower cordial
A classic recipe and one that my mum and I make every summer. Elderflowers are found everywhere amongst our hedgerows and their frothy clouds of flowers cast a heavenly scent as you walk by them.
This recipe for traditional elderflower cordial is easy to make and is a delight to drink.
Provençal potato Salad with truffle oil and edible flowers
Image via Great British Chefs
Another French-inspired recipe for a very grown-up potato salad. The truffle oil makes it a sophisticated salad to serve at any summer dinner party.
It's also adorned with Mallow, Nasturtium, Pansies, Borage and Daisies; a truly beautiful salad in all senses.
Tomato and cucumber salsa jelly with borage flowers
Image via Food and Travel
A savoury version of a salsa in a jelly now, and what a fabulous idea this is for serving a light and refreshing starter during the warmer months.
The serving suggestion is that you can enjoy these with flat breads, but they would be great with a summer cheese board too.
Rose-scented strawberry cocktail
Image via Drinkstuff
How utterly decadent! This rose and strawberry cocktail is summer in a glass, with the bubbly bonus of Champagne or Prosecco. It looks gorgeous and only contains four ingredients; divine.
Garden cake
Image via Red Online
This cake is simply gorgeous. According to the recipe, this creamy Scandinavian meringue cake celebrates the flavours and freshness of spring and summer.
The cake is actually two giant meringues sandwiched together with cream and is covered in a garden of edible flowers!
Karen Burns-Booth is a freelance recipe developer, food and travel writer and is a member of the Guild of Food Writers. She writes for her own blog Lavender and Lovage.
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